William Blake and His Illustrations to the Divine Comedy

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HE SAVOY

AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY

"^ P--^ 'Vl

THE SAVOY

No. 3

r

J2y^ S3Z.\1

' SEP 21 1920

.J./enABV

THE SAVOY— N° III

THE
SAVOY

EDITED BY ARTHUR SYMONS

CHISWICK PKBSS:— CHARLIS WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COUKT, CKANCBXY LANS, LONDON.

EDITORIAL NOTE

NEW volume of "The Savoy" commences with
the July number, and it has been decided, in conse-
quence of the interest which has been taken in the
two numbers- already issued, to make the Magazine
a Monthly instead of a Quarterly.
The policy of "The Savoy" will remain precisely what it
has hitherto been, but the opportunities of monthly publication will
permit of the issue of a serial, and arrangements are being made with
Mr. George Moore for the serial publication of his new novel,
"Evelyn Innes."

It is not unreasonably assumed that those who have welcomed
" The Savoy " as a Quarterly will welcome it with at least equal
interest as a Monthly, and it is confidently hoped that the large
public, to which a Quarterly comes with too occasional an appeal, will
appreciate the monthly publication of a Periodical whose only aim
is to offer its readers letterpress which is literature, and illustrations
which are art

Arthur. Symons.

Jutu, 1896.

All communications should he directed to The Editor OF

The Savoy, Effingham House^ Arundel Street ^ Strand^ London^
W.C. MSS. should be type-written^ and stamps enclosed for

their return.

I

^

LITERARY CONTENTS

PAGE

EDITORIAL NOTE 7

ANTHONY GARSTIirS CO URTSHIP. A Story by Hubert Crackan-

THORPE 15

BRETON AFTERNOON A Poem by Ernest Dowson .... 40
WULLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE

CO MED v.

I. His Opinions upon Art. (The First of Three Articles by

W. B. Yeats) 41

IN CARNIVAL, A Poem by Arthur Symons 58

THE CLO WN A Story by Roman Mathieu-Wierzbinski . . . . S9
a SULLIVAN R UA TO MAR Y LA VELL, A Poem by W. B. Yeats . 67
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE— IL (The Second of Three Articles by

Havelock Ellis) 68

FROM THE ''IGNEZ DE CASTRO'' OF ANTONIO FERREIRA.

Translated into English Verse by Edgar Prestage 82

BERTHA AT THE FAIR. A Sketch 86

THE BALLAD OF A BARBER. A Poem by Aubrey Beardsley (illustrated) 9 1
THE SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. An Essay by Edward Carpenter . 94
THE FUTURE PHENOMENON. A Prose Poem translated from the

French of St^phane Mallarmi^ by George Moore 98

A LITER A R Y CA USERIE :—0n Some Novels, chiefly French. By Arthur

Symons 100

NOTE . 103

M

1 .

r

THE SAVOY— N° III

**

BBV

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP

I

STAMPEDE of huddled sheep, wildly scampering over the
slaty shingle, emerged from the leaden mist that muffled the
fell-top, and a shril! shepherd's whistle broke the damp
stillness of the air. And presently a man's figure appeared,
following the sheep down the hillside. He halted a moment
to whistle curtly to his two dogs, who, laying back their ears,
chased the sheep at top-speed beyond the brow ; then, his hands deep in his
pockets, he strode vigorously forward. A streak of white smoke from a toiling
train was creeping silently across the distance : the great, grey, desolate
undulations of treeless country showed no other sign of life.

The sheep hurried in single file along a tiny track worn threadbare amid
the brown, lumpy grass ; and, as the man came round the mountain's shoulder,
a narrow valley opened out beneath him — a scanty patchwork of green fields,
and, here and there, a whitewashed farm, flanked by a dark cluster of
sheltering trees.

The man walked with a loose, swinging gait His figure was spare and
angular : he wore a battered, black felt hat and clumsy, iron-bound boots : his
clothes were dingy from long exposure to the weather. He had close-set,
insignificant eyes, much wrinkled, and stubbly eyebrows streaked with grey.
His mouth was close-shaven, and drawn by his abstraction into hard and
taciturn lines ; beneath his chin bristled an unkempt fringe of sandy-coloured
hair.

When he reached the foot of the fell, the twilight was already blurring the
distance. The sheep scurried, with a noisy rustling, across a flat, swampy
stretch, over-grown with rushes, while the dogs headed them towards a gap in
a low, ragged wall built of loosely-heaped boulders, The man swung the gate
to after them, and waited, whistling peremptorily, recalling the dogs, A
moment later, the animals re-appeared, cringing as they crawled through the
bars of the gate. He kicked out at them contemptuously, and mounting a
stone stile a few yards further up the road, dropped into a narrow lane.

i6 THE SAVOY

Presently, as he passed a row of lighted windows, he heard a voice call to
him. He stopped, and perceived a crooked, white-bearded figure, wearing
clerical clothes, standing in the garden gateway.

" Good evening, Anthony. A raw evening this."

" Ay, Mr. Blencam, it *s a bit frittish," he answered. " I've jest bin gittin'
a few lambs off t' fell. I hope ye're keepin' fairly, an' Miss Rosa too." He
spoke briefly, with a loud, spontaneous cordiality.

"Thank ye, Anthony, thank ye. Rosa's down at the church, playing
over the hymns for to-morrow. How 's Mrs. Garstin ? " • '

" Nicely, thank ye, Mr. Blencam. She 's wonderful active, is mother.**

" Well, good-night to ye, Anthony," said the old man, clicking the gate.

" Good-night, Mr. Blencam," he called back.

A few minutes later the twinkling lights of the village came in sight, and
from within the sombre form of the square-towered church, looming by the
roadside, the slow, solemn strains of the organ floated out on the evening air.
Anthony lightened his tread : then paused, listening ; but, presently, becoming
aware that a man stood, listening also, on the bridge some few yards distant,
he moved forward again. Slackening his pace, as he approach^, he eyed the
figure keenly ; but the man paid no heed to him, remaining, with his back
tumed, gazing over the parapet in to. the dark, gui^llng stream.

Anthony trudged along the empty village street, past the gleaming squares
of ruddy gold, starting on either side out of the darkness. Now and then he
looked furtively backwards. The straight open road lay behind him, glimmer-
ing wanly : the organ seemed to have ceased : the figure on the bridge had
left the parapet, and appeared to be moving away towards the church.
Anthony halted, watching it till it had disappeared into the blackness beneath
the churchyard trees. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he left the road, and
mounted an upland meadow towards his mother's farm.

It was a bare, oblong house. In front, a whitewashed porch, and a narrow
garden-plot, enclosed by a low iron railing, were dimly discernible : behind,
the steep fell-side loomed like a monstrous, mysterious curtain hung across
the night. He passed round the back into the twilight of a wide yard,
cobbled and partially grass-grown, vaguely flanked by the shadowy outlines of
long, low farm-building^. All was wrapped in darkness : somewhere overhead
a bat fluttered, darting its puny scream.

Inside, a blazing peat-fire scattered capering shadows across the smooth,
stone floor, flickered among the dim rows of hams suspended from the ceiling
and on the panelled cupboards of dark, glistening oak. A servant-girl, spread-

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 17

ing the cloth for supper, clattered her clogs in and out of the kitchen : old
Mrs. Garstin was stooping before the hearth, tremulously turning some girdle-
cakes that lay roasting in the embers.

At the sound of Anthony's heavy tread in the passage, she rose, glancing
sharply at the clock above the chimney-piece. She was a heavy-built woman,
upright, stalwart almost, despite her years. Her face was gaunt and sallow ;
deep wrinkles accentuated the hardness of her features. She wore a black
widow's cap above her iron-gray hair, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a soiled,
chequered apron.

" Ye're varra late, Tony," she remarked querulously.

He unloosed his woollen neckerchief, and when he had hung it methodically
with his hat behind the door, answered :

" 'Twas terrible thick on f fell-top, an' them two bitches be that senseless."

She caught his sleeve, and, through her spectacles, suspiciously scrutinized
his face.

" Ye did na meet wi' Rosa Blencarn ? "

" Nay, she was in church, hymn-playin', wi' Luke Stock hangin' roond
door," he retorted bitterly, rebuffing her with rough impatience.

She moved away, nodding sententiously to herself. They began supper :
neither spoke : Anthony sat slowly stirring his tea, and staring moodily into
the flames : the bacon on his plate lay untouched. From time to time his
mother, laying down her knife and fork, looked across at him in unconcealed
asperity, pursing her wide, ungainly mouth. At last, abruptly setting down
her cup, she broke out :

" I wonder ye havn'a m^re pride, Tony. For hoo lang are ye goin' t'
continue settin' mopin' and broodin' like a seek sheep. Ye'll jest mak yesself
ill, an' then I reckon what ye'll prove satisfied. Ay, but I wonder ye hav'na
more pride."

But he made no answer, remaining unmoved, as if he had not heard.

Presently, half to himself, without raising his eyes, he murmured :

" Luke be goin' South, Monday."

" Well, ye canna tak' oop wi' his leavin's anyways. It hasna coom t' that,
has it ? Ye doan't intend settin' all t' parish a laughin' at ye a second occasion ? "

He flushed dully, and bending over his plate, mechanically began his
supper.

** Wa dang it," he broke out a minute later, " d'ye think I heed t' cacklin'
o' fifty parishes ? Na, not I," and, with a short, grim laugh, he brought his fist
down heavily on the oak table.

i8 THE SAVOY

" YeVe daft, Tony," the old woman blurted.

"* Daft or na daft, I tell ye this, mother, that I be forty-six year o' age this
back-end, and there be soom things I will na listen ta Rosa Blencam's
bonny enough for me."

" Ay, bonny enough — IVe na patience wi' ye. Bonny enough — tricked
oot in her furbelows, gallivantin* wi' every royster fra Pe'rith. Bonny enough
— ^that be all ye think on. She's bin a proper parson's niece— ^the g^ddy,
feckless creature, an' she'd mak' ye a proper sort o' wife, Tony Garstin, ye
great, fond booby."

She pushed back her chair, and, hurri^ly clattering the crockery, began
to clear away the supper.

" T'hoose be mine, t' Lord be praised," she continued in a loud, hard voice,
** an' as long as He spare me, Tony, I'll na' see Rosa Blencam set foot inside it"

Anthony scowled, without replying, and drew his chair to the hearth.
His mother bustled about the room behind him. After a while she asked :

" Did ye pen t' lambs in t' back field ? "

" Na, the)r're in HuUam bottom," he answered curtly.

The door closed behind her, and by-and-by he could hear her moving
overhead. Meditatively blinking, he filled his pipe clumsily, and pulling a
crumpled newspaper from his pocket, sat on over the smouldering fire, reading
and stolidly puffing.

H

The music rolled through the dark, empty church. The last, leaden flicker
of daylight glimmered in through the pointed windows, and beyond the level
rows of dusky pews, tenanted only by a litter of prayer-books, two guttering
candles revealed the organ-pipes, and the young girl's swaying figure.

She played vigorously. Once or twice the tune stumbled ; and she
recovered it impatiently, bending over the key-board, showily flourishing her
wrists as she touched the stops. She was bare-headed (her hat and cloak lay
beside her on a stool). She had fair, fluffy hair, cut short behind her neck ;
large, round eyes, heightened by a fringe of dark lashes ; rough, ruddy cheeks,
and a rosy, full-lipped, unstable mouth. She was dressed quite simply, in a
black, close-fitting bodice, a little frayed at the sleeves. Her hands and neck
were coarsely fashioned : her comeliness was brawny, literal, unfinished, as
it were.

When at last the ponderous chords of the Amen faded slowly into the

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 19

twilight, flushed, breathing a little quickly, she paused, listening to the stillness
of the church. Presently a small boy emerged from behind the organ.

" Good evenin'. Miss Rosa," he called, trotting briskly away down the aisle^

" Good night, Robert," she answered, absently.

After a while, with an impatient gesture, as if to shake some importunate
thought from her mind, she rose abruptly, pinned on her hat, threw her cloak
round her shoulders, blew out the candles, and groped her way through the
f church, towards the half-open door. As she hurried along the narrow path-
way, that led across the churchyard, of a sudden, a figure started out of the
blackness.

" Who's that ? " she cried, in a loud, frightened voice.

A man's uneasy laugh answered her.

" It's only me, Rosa. I didna think t' scare ye. I've bin waitin' for ye,,
this hoor past"

She made no reply, but quickened her pace. He strode on beside her.

" I'm off, Monday, ye know," he continued. And, as she said nothing,

" Will ye na stop jest a minnit. I'd like t' speak a few words wi' ye before
I go, an to-morrow I hev t' git over t' Scarsdale betimes," he persisted.

" I don't want t' speak wi' ye : I don't want ever to see ye agin. I jest
hate the sight o' ye." She spoke with a vehement, concentrated hoarseness.

" Nay, but ye must listen to me. I will na be put off wi' fratchin speeches.'"
And, gripping her arm, he forced her to stop.

" Loose me, ye great beast," she broke out.

" I'll na hould ye, if ye'U jest stand quiet-like. I mean t' speak fair t' ye,.
Rosa."

They stood at a bend in the road, face to face, quite close together.
Behind his burly form stretched the dimness of a grey, ghostly field.

"What is't ye hev to say to me? Hev done wi' it quick," she said
sullenly.

** It be jest this, Rosa," he b^an with dogged gravity. " I want t' tell ye
that ef any trouble comes t' ye after I'm gone — ^ye know t' what I refer —
I want f tell ye that I'm prepared t' act square by ye. I've written out
on an envelope my address in London. Luke Stock, care o' Purcell & Co.,
Smithfield Market, London."

" Ye're a bad, sinful man. I jest hate t* sight o' ye. I wish ye were dead."^

" Ay, but I reckon what ye'd ha best thought o' that before. Ye've changed
yer whistle considerable since Tuesday. Nay, hould on," he added, as she
struggled to push past him. " Here 's t' envelope."

B

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 21

below, he turned abruptly to the left, along a small, swampy hollow, till he had
reached the lane that led down from the fellside.

He clambered over a rugged, moss-grown wall, and stood, gazing expec-
tantly down the dark, disused roadway : then, after a moment's hesitation,
perceiving nobody, seated himself beneath the wall, on a projecting slab of stone.

Overhead hung a sombre, drifting sky. A gusty wind rollicked down
from the fell — huge masses of chilly gray, stripped of the last night's mist A
few dead leaves fluttered over the stones, and from off the fellside there floated
the plaintive, quavering rumour of many bleating sheep.

Before long, he caught sight of two figures coming towards him, slowly
climbing the hill. He sat awaiting their approach, fidgetting with his sandy
beard, and abstractedly grinding the ground beneath his heel. At the brow
they halted : plunging his hands deep into his pockets, he strolled sheepishly
towards them.

" Ah ! good day t' ye, ^nthony," called the old man, in a shrill, breathless
voice. " Tis a long hill, an' my legs are not what they were. Time was when
I'd think nought o' a whole day's tramp on t* fells. Ay, I'm gittin' feeble*
Anthony, that's what 'tis. And if Rosa here wasn't the great, strong lass she
is, I don't know how her old uncle 'd manage ; " and he turned to the girl
with a proud, tremulous smile.

" Will ye tak my arm a bit, Mr. Blencam ? Miss Rosa *11 be tired, likely,"
Anthony asked.

" Nay, Mr. Garstin, but I can manage nicely," the girl interrupted sharply.

Anthony looked up at her as she spoke. She wore a straw hat, trimmed
with crimson velvet, and a black, fur-edged cape, that seemed to set off mightily
the fine whiteness of her neck. Her large, dark eyes were fixed upon him.
He shifted his feet uneasily, and dropped his glance.

She linked her uncle's arm in hers, and the three moved slowly forward.
Old Mr. Blencam walked with difficulty, pausing at intervals for breath.
Anthony, his eyes bent on the ground, sauntered beside him, clumsily kicking
at the cobbles that lay in his path.

When they reached the vicarage gate, the old man asked him to come
inside.

" Not jest now, thank ye, Mr. Blencam. I've that lot o' lambs t' see to
before dinner. It's a grand mamin', this," he added, inconsequently.

" Uncle 's bought a nice lot o' Leghoms, Tuesday," Rosa remarked.
Anthony met her gaze ; there was a grave, subdued expression on her face
this moming, that made her look more of a woman, less of a girl.

22 THE SAVOY

" Ay, do ye show him the birds, Rosa. Fd be glad to have his opinion

on 'em."

The old man turned to hobble into the house, and Rosa, as she supported
his arm, called back over her shoulder :

" ril not be a minute, Mr. Garstin."

Anthony strolled round to the yard behind the house, and waited, watch-
ing a flock of glossy-white poultry that strutted, perkily pecking, over the
grass-gfrown cobbles.

" Ay, Miss Rosa, they're a bonny lot," he remarked, as the girl joined him.

" Are they not ? " she rejoined, scattering a handful of com before her.

The birds scuttled across the yard with greedy, outstretched necks. The
two stood, side by side, gazing at them.

" What did he give for 'em ? " Anthony asked.

" Fifty-five shillings."

" Ay," he assented, nodding absently.

" Was Dr. Sanderson na seein' o' yer father yesterday ? " he asked, after a
moment.

" He came in t* forenoon. He said he was jest na worse."

"Ye knaw. Miss Rosa, as I'm still thinkin* on ye," he began abruptly,
without looking up.

" I reckon it ain't much use," she answered shortly, scattering another
handful of com towards the birds. " I reckon I'll never marry. I'm jest
weary o* bein' courted "

" I would na weary ye wi' courtin'," he interrupted

She laughed noisily.

" Ye are a queer customer, an na mistake."

" I'm a match for Luke Stock anyway," he continued fiercely. " Ye think
nought o' takin' oop wi' him — about as ranty, wild a young feller as ever stepped.

The girl reddened, and bit her lip.

" I don't know what you mean, Mr. Garstin. It seems to me ye're
mighty hasty in jumpin' t' conclusions."

" Mabbee I kin see thing or two," he retorted, doggedly.

" Luke Stock 's gone to London, anyway."

" Ay, an' a powerful good job too, in t' opinion o' some folks."

"Ye're jest jealous," she exclaimed, with a forced titter. "Ye're jest
jealous o' Luke Stock."

" Nay, but ye need na fill yer head wi' that nonsense. I'm too deep set
on ye t' feel jealousy," he answered, gravely.

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 23

The smile faded from her face, as she murmured :

" I canna mak ye out, Mr. Garstin."

" Nay, that ye canna. An* I suppose it's natural, considerin' yeVe little
more than a child, an' Fm a'most old enough to be yer father," he retorted,
with blunt bitterness.

" But ye know yer mother's took that dislike t' me. She'd never abide
the sight o* me at Houtsey."

He remained silent a moment, moodily reflecting.

*• She'd jest ha' t' git ower it I see nought in that objection," he declared.

" Nay, Mr. Garstin, it canna be. Indeed it canna be at all. Ye'd best
jest put it right from yer mind, once and for all."

" I'd jest best put it off" my mind, had I ? Ye talk like a child ! " he burst
out, scornfully. " I intend ye t' coom t' love me, an' I will na tak ye till ye do.
ril jest go on waitin' for ye, an', mark my words, my day 'ull coom at last"

He spoke loudly, in a slow, stubborn voice, and stepped suddenly towards
her. With a faint, frightened cry she shrank back into the doorway of the
hen-house.

" Ye talk like a prophet. Ye sort o' skeer me."

He laughed grimly, and paused, reflectively scanning her face. He
seemed about to continue in the same strain ; but, instead, turned abruptly on
his heel, and strode away through the garden gate.

IV

For three hundred years there had been a Garstin at Houtsey : generation
after generation had tramped the gray stretch of upland, in the spring-time
scattering their flocks over the fell-sides, and, at the " back-end," on dark,
winter afternoons, driving them home again, down the broad bridle-path, that
led over the " raise." They had been a race of few words, " keeping themselves
to themselves," as the phrase goes ; beholden to no man, filled with a dogged,
churlish pride — an upright, old-fashioned race, stubborn, long-lived, rude in
speech, slow of resolve.

Anthony had never seen his father, who had died one night, upon the
fell-top, he and his shepherd, engulfed in the great snowstorm of 1849. Folks
had said that he was the only Garstin, who had failed to make old man's bones.

After his death, Jake Atkinson, from Ribblehead in Yorkshire, had come
to live at Houtsey. Jake was a fine farmer, a canny £>argainer, and very
handy among the sheep, till he took to drink, and roystering every week with

24 THE SAVOY

the town wenches up at Carlisle. He was a corpulent, deep-voiced, free-
handed fellow : when his time came, though he died very hardly, he remained
festive and convivial to the last. And for years afterwards, in the yalley, his
memory lingered : men spoke of him regretfully, recalling his quips, his feats of
strength, and his choice breed of Herdwicke rams. But he left behind him a
host of debts up at Carlisle, in Penrith, and in almost every market town —
debts that he had long ago pretepded to have paid with money that belonged to
his sister. The widow Garstin sold the twelve Herdwicke rams, and nine acres
of land : within six weeks she had cleared off every penny, and for thirteen
months, on Sundays, wore her mourning with a mute, forbidding grimness :
the bitter thought that, unbeknown to her, Jake had acted dishonestly in
money matters, and that he had ended his days in riotous sin, soured her
pride, imbued her with a rancorous hostility against all the world. For she
was a very proud woman, independent, holding her head high, so folks said,
like a Garstin bred and bom ; and Anthony, although some reckoned him
quiet and of little account, came to take after her as he grew into manhood*

She took into her own hands the management of the Houtsey farm, and
set tlie boy to work for' her along with the two farm servants. It was
twenty-five years now since his uncle Jake's death : there were gray hairs in
his sandy beard ; but he still worked for his mother, as he had done when a
growing lad.

And now that times were grown to be bad (of late years the price of stock
had been steadily falling ; and the hay-harvests had drifted from bad to worse)
the widow Garstin no longer kept any labouring men ; but lived, she and her
son, year in and year out, in a close, parsimonious way.

That had been Anthony Garstin's life — a dull, eventless sort of business,
the sluggish incrustation of monotonous years. And until Rosa Blencam had
come to keep house for her uncle, he had never thought twice on a woman's
face.

The Garstins had always been good church-goers, and Anthony, for
years, had acted as churchwarden. It was one summer evening, up at the
vicarage, whilst he was checking the offertory account, that he first set e)^es
upon her. She was fresh back from school at Leeds : she was dressed in a
white dress : she looked, he thought, like a London lady.

She stood by the window, tall and straight and queenly, dreamily gazing
out into the summer twilight, whilst he and her uncle sat over their business.
When he rose to go, she glanced at him with quick curiosity ; he hurried away,
muttering a sheepish good-night

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 25

The next time that he saw her was in church on Sunday. He watched
her shyly, with a hesitating, reverential discretion ; her beauty seemed to him
wonderful, distant, enigmatic. In the afternoon, young Mrs. Forsyth, from
Longscale. dropped in for a cup of tea with his mother, and the two set off
gossiping of Rosa Blencarn, speaking of her freely, in tones of acrimonioas
contempt. For a long while he sat silent, puffing at his pipe ; but, at last,
when his mother concluded with, " She looks t'me fair stuck-oop, full o' toonish
airs an' graces." despite himself, he burst out: "Ye're jest wastin' yer breath
wi' that cackle. I reckon Miss Blencarn 's o' a different clay from us folks."
Young Mrs. Forsyth tittered immoderately, and the next week it was rumoured
about the valley that " Tony Garstin was gone luny over t' parson's niece."

But of all this he knew nothing — keeping to himself, as was his wont, and
being, besides, very busy with the hay harvest — until one day, at dinner-time,
Henry Sisson asked if he'd started his courting ; Jacob Sowerby cried that
Tony 'd been too slow in getting to work, for that the girl had been seen
spooning in Crosby Shaws with Curbison the auctioneer, and the others
(there were half a dozen of them lounging round the hay-waggon) burst into
a boisterous guffaw. Anthony flushed dully, looking he.sitatingly from the one
to the other ; then slowly put down his beer-can, and, of a sudden, seizing
Jacob by the neck, swung him heavily on the grass. He fell against the
waggon-wheel, and when he rose the blood was streaming from an ugly cut in
his forehead. And henceforward Tony Garstin's courtship was the common
jest of ail the parish.

As yet, however, he had scarcely spoken to her. though twice he had
passed her in the lane that led up to the vicarage. She had given him a frank,
friendly smile ; but he had not found the resolution to do more than lift his
hat He and Henry Sisson stacked the hay in the yard behind the house,
there was no further mention made of Rosa Blencarn ; but all day long
Anthony, as he knelt thatching the rick, brooded over the strange sweetness
of her face, and on the fell-top, while he tramped after the ewes over the dry,
crackling heather, and as he jogged along the narrow, rickety road, driving his
cartload of lambs into the auction mart.

Thus, as the weeks slipped by, he was content with blunt, wistful rumina-
tions upon her indistinct image. Jacob Sowerby's accusation, and several
kindred innuendoes let fall by his mother, left him coolly incredulous ; the girl
still seemed to him altogether distant ; but from the first sight of her face he
had evolved a stolid, unfaltering conception of her difference from the ruck of
her sex.

26 THE SAVOY

But one evening, as he passed the vicarage, on his way down from the
fells, she called to him, and with a childish, confiding familiarity, asked for
advice concerning the feeding of the poultry. In his eagerness to answer her
as best he could, he forgot his customary embarrassment, and grew, for the
moment, almost voluble, and quite at his ease in her presence. Directly her
flow of questions ceased, however, the returning perception of her rosy, hesitating
smile, and of her large, deep eyes looking straight into his face, perturbed him
strangely, and, reddening, he remembered the quarrel in the hay-field, and the
tale of Crosby Shaws.

After this, the poultry became a link between them — a link which he
regarded in all seriousness, blindly unconscious that there was aught else to
bring them together, only feeling himself in awe of her, because of her school-
ing, her townish manners, her ladylike mode of dress. And soon, he came to
take a sturdy, secret pride in her friendly familiarity towards him. Several
times a week he would meet her in the lane, and they would loiter a moment
together ; she would admire his dogs, though he assured her earnestly that
they were but sorry curs ; and once, laughing at his staidness, she nicknamed
him " Mr. Churchwarden."

That the girl was not liked in the valley he suspected, curtly attributing
her unpopularity to the women's senseless jealousy. Of gossip concerning hfer
he heard no further hint ; but instinctively, and partly from that rugged, natural
reserve of his, shrank from mentioning her name, even incidentally, to his
mother.

Now, on Sunday evenings, he often strolled up to the vicarage, each time
quitting his mother with the same awkward affectation of casualness ; and,
on his return, becoming vaguely conscious of how she refrained from any
comment on his absence, and appeared oddly oblivious of the existence of
parson Blencam's niece.

She had always been a sour-tongued woman ; but, as the days shortened,
with the approach of the long winter months, she seemed to him to gfrow more
fretful than ever ; at times it was almost as if she bore him some smouldering,
sullen resentment He was of stubborn fibre, however, toughened by long
habit of a bleak, unruly climate ; he revolved the matter in his mind delibe*
rately, and when, at last, after much plodding thought, it dawnied upon him
that she resented his acquaintance with Rosa Blencam, he accepted the solu-
tion with an unflinching phlegm, and merely shifted his attitude towards the
girl, calculating each day the likelihood of his meeting her, and making, in her
presence, persistent efforts to break down, once for all, the barrier of his own

I

ANTHONY GARSTINS COURTSHIP 27

timidity. He was a man not to be clumsily driven, still less, so he prided
himself, a man to be craftily led.

It was close upon Christmas time before the crisis came. His motherwas
just home from Penrith market. The spring-cart stood in the yard, the old
gray horse was steaming heavily in the still, frosty air.

" I reckon ye've come fast. T' ould horse is over hot," he remarked
bluntly, as he went to the animal's head.

She clambered down hastily, and, coming to his side, began breathlessly ;

" Ye ought t' hev coom t' market, Tony. There 's bin pretty goin's on in
Fe'rith to-day. I was helpin' Anna Forsyth t' choose six yards o' sheetin' in
Dockroy, when we sees Rosa Rlencarn coom oot o' f " Bell and Bullock " in
company wi' Curbison and young Joe Smethwick. Smethwick was fair reelin'
drunk, and Curbison and t' girl were a-houldin' on t' him, to keep him fra
fallin', and then, after a bit, he puts his arm round t' girl t' stiddy hisself, and
that fashion they goes off, right oop t' public street "

He continued to unload the packages, and to carry them, mechanically,
one by one, into the house. Each time, when he reappeared, she was standing
by the steaming horse, busy with her tale.

" An' on t' road hame we passed t' three on' em in Curbison's trap, with
Smethwick leein' in t' bottom, singin' maudlin' songs. They were passin'
Dunscale village, an' t' folks coom runnin' oot o' houses t' see 'em go past "

He led the cart away towards the stable, leaving her to cry the remainder
after him across the yard.

Half an hour later he came in for his dinner. During the meal not a word
passed between them, and directly he had finished he strode out of the house.
About nine o'clock he returned, lit his pipe, and sat down to smoke it over the
kitchen fire.

" Where've ye bin, Tony ? " she asked.

"Oop t' vicarage, courtin'," he retorted defiantly, with his pipe in his
moutK

This was ten months ago : ever since he had been doggedly waiting. That
evening he had set his mind on the girl, he intended to have her ; and while
his mother gibed, as she did now upon every opportunity, his patience remained
grimly unflagging. She would remind him that the farm belonged to her, that
he would have to wait till her death before he could bring the hussy to
Houtsey : he would retort that as soon as the girl would have him, he intended
taking a small holding over at Scarsdale. Then she would give way, and for
a while piteously upbraid him with her old age, and with the memory of all the

28 THE SAVOY

years she and he had spent together, and he would comfort her with a display
of brusque, evasive remorse.

But, none the less, on the morrow, his thoughts would return to dwell on
the haunting vision of the girl's face, while his own rude, credulous chivalry,
kindled by the recollection of her beauty, stifled his misgivings concerning her
conduct

Meanwhile she dallied with him, and amused herself with the younger
men. Her old uncle fell ill in the spring, and could scarcely leave the house.
She declared that she found life in the valley intolerably dull, that she hated
the quiet of the place, that she longed for Leeds, and the exciting bustle of the
streets ; and in the evenings she wrote long letters to the girl-friends she had
left behind there, describing with petulant vivacity her tribe of rustic admirers.
At the harvest-time she went back on a fortnight's visit to friends ; the
evening before her departure she promised Anthony to give him her answer
on her return. But, instead, she avoided him, pretended to have promised
in jest, and took up with Luke Stock, a cattle-dealer from Wigton.

V

It was three weeks since he had fetched his flock down from the fell.

After dinner he and his mother sat together in the parlour : they had
done so every Sunday afternoon, year in and year out, as far back as he could
remember.

A row of mahogany chairs, with shiny, horse-hair seats, were ranged
round the room. A great collection of agricultural prize-tickets were pinned
over the wall ; and, on a heavy, highly-polished sideboard, stood several silver
cups. A heap of gilt-edged shavings filled the unused grate : there were
gaudily-tinted roses along the mantelpiece, and, on a small table by the
window, beneath a glass-case, a gilt basket filled with imitation flowers.
Every object was disposed with a scrupulous precision : the carpet and the
red-patterned cloth on the centre-table were much faded. The room was
spotlessly clean, and wore, in the chilly winter sunlight, a rigid, comfort-
less air.

Neither spoke, or appeared conscious of the other's presence. Old Mrs.-
Garstin, wrapped in a woollen shawl, sat knitting : Anthony dozed fitfully on
a stiff-backed chair.

Of a sudden, in the distance, a bell started tolling. Anthony rubbed his
eyes drowsily, and, taking from the table his Sunday hat, strolled out across the

ANTHONY GARS TIN'S COURTSHIP 29

dusky fields. Presently, reaching a rude wooden seat, built beside the bridle-
path, he sat down and relit his pipe. The air was very still : below him a white,
filmy mist hung across the valley : the fell sides, vaguely grouped, resembled
hulking masses of sombre shadow ; and, as he looked back, three squares
of glimmering gold revealed the lighted windows of the square-towered
church.

He sat smoking ; pondering, with placid and reverential contemplation, on
the Mighty Maker of the world — a world mijestically and inevitably ordered ;
a world where, he argued, each object — each fissure in the fells, the winding
course of each tumbling stream — possesses its mysterious purport, its inevitable
signification. ... •

At the end of the field two rams were fighting ; retreating, then running
together, and, leaping from the ground, butting head'to head and horn to horn.
Anthony watched them absently, pursuing his rude meditations.

. . . And the succession of bad seasons, the slow ruination of the farmers
throughout the country, were but punishment meted out for the accumulated
wickedness of the world. In the olden time God rained plagues upon the
land : nowadays, in His wrath. He spoiled the produce of the earth, which,
with His own hands, He had fashioned and bestowed upon men.

He rose and continued his walk along the bridle-path. A multitude
of rabbits scuttled up the hill at his approach ; and a great cloud of plovers,
rising from the rushes, circled overhead, filling the air with a profusion of their
querulous cries. All at once he heard a rattling of stones, and perceived
a number of small pieces of shingle bounding in front of him down the grassy
slope.

A woman's figure was moving among the rocks above him. The next
moment, by the trimming of crimson velvet on her hat, he had recognized her.
He mounted the slope with springing strides, wondering the while how it was
she came to be there, that she was not in church playing the organ at afternoon
service.

Before she was aware of his approach, he was beside her.

" I thought ye'd be in church " he began.

She started : then, gradually regaining her composure, answered, weakly
smiling :

" Mr. Jenkinson, the new schoolmaster, wanted to try the organ."

He came towards her impulsively : she saw the odd flickers in his eyes as
she stepped back in dismay.

" Nay, but I will na harm ye," he said. " Only I reckon what 'tis a special

30 THE SAVOY

turn o' Providence, meetin' wi' ye oop here. I reckon what ye'll hev t* give me
a square answer noo. Ye canna dilly-dally everlastingly."

He spoke almost brutally ; and she stood, white and gasping, staring
at him with large, frightened eyes. The sheep-walk was but a tiny threadlike
track : the slope of the shingle on either side was very steep : below them lay
the valley ; distant, lifeless, all blurred by the evening dusk. She looked about
her helplessly for a means of escape.

" Miss Rosa," he continued, in a husky voice, " can ye na coom t' think on
me. Think ye, I've bin waitin* nigh upon two year for ye. Pve watched ye
tak oop, first wi' this young fellar, and then wi* that, till soomtimes my heart 's
fit t' burst Many a day, oop on t' fell-top, t' thought o* ye 's nigh driven me
daft, and I've left my shepherdin' jest t' set on a cairn in t' mist, picturin* an'
broodin' on yer face. Many an evenin* I've started oop t* vicarage, wi' t'
resolution t' speak right oot t' ye ; but when it coomed t' point, a sort o'
timidity seemed t' hould me back, I was that feared t'^displease ye. I knaw I'm
na scholar, an' mabbe ye think I'm rough-mannered. I knaw I've spoken
sharply to ye once or twice lately. But it 's jest because I'm that mad wi' love
for ye : I jest canna help myself soomtimes — "

Ha waited, peering into her face. She could see the beads of sweat above
his bristling eyebrows : the damp had settled on his sandy beard : his homy
fingers were twitching at the buttons of his black Sunday coat.

She struggled to summon a smile ; but her underlip quivered, and her
lai^e dark eyes filled slowly with tears.

And he went on :

" Ye've coom t' mean jest everything to me. Ef ye will na hev me, I care
for nought else. I canna speak t' ye in phrases : I'm jest a plain, unscholarly
man : I canna wheedle ye, wi' cunnin* after t' fashion o' toon folks. But I can
love ye wi' all my might, an' watch over ye, and work for ye better than any
one o' em "

She was crying to herself, silently, while he spoke. He noticed nothing,
however : the twilight hid her face from him.

" There 's nought against me," he persisted " I'm as good a man as
one on 'em. Ay, as good a man as any one on 'em," he repeated defiantly,
raising his voice.

" It 's impossible, Mr. Garstin, it 's impossible. Ye've been very kind to
me " she added, in a choking voice.

"Wa dang it, I didna mean t' mak ye cry, lass," he exclaimed, with
a softening of his tone. " There 's nought for ye t' cry ower."

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 31

She sank on to the stones, passionately sobbing in hysterical and defence-
less despair. Anthony stood a moment, gazing at her in clumsy perplexity r
then, coming close to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and said gently :

" Coom, lass, what *9 trouble ? Ye can trust me."

She shook her head faintly.

" Ay, but ye can though," he asserted, firmly. " Come, what is 't ? "

Heedless of him, she continued to rock herself to and fro, crooning in her
distress :

" Oh ! I wish I were dead ! . . . I wish I could die ! "

— " Wish ye could die ? " he repeated. " Why, whatever can 't be that 's
troublin' ye like this ? There, there, lassie, give ower : it 'ull all coom right,
whatever it be "

" No, no," she wailed. " I wish I could die ! ... I wish I could die ! "

Lights were twinkling in the village below ; and across the valley darkness
was draping the hills. The girl lifted her face from her hands, and looked up
at him with a scared, bewildered expression.

" I must go home : I must be getting home," she muttered.

" Nay, but there 's sommut mighty amiss wi' ye."

"No, it's nothing ... I don't know — Vm not well ... I mean it's
nothing ... it *11 pass over . . . you mustn't think anything of it."

" Nay, but I canna stand by an see ye in sich trouble."

" It 's nothing, Mr. Garstin, indeed it 's nothing," she repeated.

" Ay, but I canna credit that," he objected, stubbornly.

She sent him a shifting, hunted glance.

" Let me get home . . . you must let me get home."

She made a tremulous, pitiful attempt at firmness. Eyeing her keenly,
he barred her path : she flushed scarlet, and looked hastily away across the
valley.

" If ye'll tell me yer distress, mabbe I can help ye."

" No, no, it* s nothing ... it 's nothing."

" If ye'll tell me yer distress, mabbe I can help ye," he repeated, with
a solemn, deliberate sternness. She shivered, and looked away again, vaguely,
across the valley.

" You can do nothing: there 's nought to be done," she murmured, drearily.

" There 's a man in this business," he declared.

" Let me go I Let me go ! " she pleaded, desperately.

"Who is't that's bin puttin' ye into this distress?" His voice sounded
loud and harsh.

32 THE SAVOY

" No one, no one. I canna tell ye, Mr. Garstin. ... It 's no one," she
protested weakly. The white, twisted look on his face frightened her.

" My God ! " he burst out, gripping her wrist, " an' a proper soft fool yeVe
made o' me. Who is't, I tell ye ? Who's t' man ? "

" Ye're hurtin' me. Let me go. I canna tell ye."

« And yeVe fond o' him ? "

" No, no. He 's a wicked, sinful man. I pray God I may never set eyes
on him again. I told him so."

" But ef he *s got ye into trouble, hell hev t* marry ye," he persisted with
a brutal bitterness.

" I will not. I hate him ! " she cried fiercely.

** But is he williri M marry ye ? "

" I don't know ... I don't care ... he said so before he went away
• . . But I'd kill myself sooner than live with him."

He let her hands fall and stepped back from her. She could only see his
figure, like a sombre cloud, standing before her. The whole fellside seemed
still and dark and lonely. Presently she heard his voice again :

" I reckon what there 's one road oot o' yer distress."

She shook her head drearily.

" There 's none. I'm a lost woman."

" An' ef ye took me instead ? " he said eagerly.

" I— I don't understand "

" Ef ye married me instead of Luke Stock ? "

" But that 's impossible — the — the "

« Ay, t' child. I know. But I'll tak t' child as mine."

She remained silent After a moment he heard her voice answer in a
queer, distant tone :

" You mean that — that ye're ready to marry me, and adopt the child ? "

" I do," he answered doggedly.

" But people — your mother ? "

" Folks 'ull jest know nought about it It 's none o' their business.
T' child 'ull pass as mine. Ye'U accept that ? "

" Yes," she answered, in a low, rapid voice.

" Ye'll consent t' hev me, ef I git ye oot o' yer trouble."

" Yes," she repeated, in the same tone.

She heard him draw a long breath.

" I said 't was a turn o* Providence, meetin* wi ye oop here," he exclaimed,
with half-suppressed exultation.

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP 33

Her teeth began to chatter a little : she felt that he was peering at her,
curiously, through the darkness.

" An* noo," he continued briskly, " ye'd best be gettin' home. Give me
ye're hand, an' I'll stiddy ye ower t' stones."

He helped her down the bank of shingle, exclaiming : " By goom, ye're
stony cauld." Once or twice she slipped : he supported her, roughly gripping
her knuckles. The stones rolled down the steps, noisily, disappearing into
the night.

Presently they struck the turfed bridle-path, and, as they descended,
silently, towards the lights of the village, he said gravely :

" I always reckoned what my day *ud coom."

She made no reply ; and he added grimly :

" There'll be terrible work wi' mother over this."

He accompanied her down the narrow lane that led past her uncle's
house. When the lighted windows came in sight he halted.

" Good-night, lassie," he said kindly. " Do ye give ower distressin'
yeself."

** Good-night, Mr. Garstin," she answered, in the same low, rapid voice, in
which she had given him her answer up on the fell

" We're man an' wife plighted now, are we not ? " he blurted timidly.

She held her face to his, and he kissed her on the cheek, clumsily.

VI

The next morning the frost had set in. The sky was still clear and
glittering : the whitened fields sparkled in the chilly sunlight : here and there,
on high, distant peaks, gleamed dainty caps of snow. All the week Anthony
was to be busy at the fell-foot, wall-building against the coming of the winter
storms : the work was heavy, for he was single-handed, and the stone had to
be fetched from off the fell-side. Two or three times a day he led his rickety,
lumbering cart along the lane that passed the vicarage gate, pausing on each
journey to glance furtively up at the windows. But he saw no sign of Rosa
Blencam ; and, indeed, he felt no longing to see her : he was grimly exultant
over the remembrance of his wooing of her, and over the knowledge that she
was his. There glowed within him a stolid pride in himself: he thought of
the others who had courted her, and the means by which he had won her
seemed to him a fine stroke of cleverness.

And so he refrained from any mention of the matter ; relishing, as he

34 THE SAVOY

worked, all alone, the days through, the consciousness of his secret triumph,
and anticipating, with inward chucklings, the discomforted cackle of his
mother's female friends. He foresaw, without misgiving, her bitter opposition :
he felt himself strong ; and his heart warmed towards the girl. And when, at
intervals, the brusque realization that, after all, he was to possess her, swept
over him, he gripped the stones, and swung them, almost fiercely, into their
places.

All around him the white, empty fields seemed slumbering, breathlessly.
The stillness stiffened the leafless trees. The frosty air flicked his blood :
singing vigorously to himself he worked with a stubborn, unflagging resolution,
methodically postponing, till the length of wall should be completed, the
announcement of his betrothal.

After his reticent, solitary fashion, he was very happy, reviewing his future
prospects with a plain and steady assurance, and, as the week-end approached,
coming to ignore the irregularity of the whole business ; almost to assume, in
the exaltation of his pride, that he had won her honestly ; and to discard,
stolidly, all thought of Luke Stock, of his relations with her, of the coming
child that was to pass for his own.

And there were moments too, when, as he sauntered homewards through
the dusk at the end of his day's work, his heart grew full to overflowing of a
rugged, superstitious gratitude towards God in Heaven who had g^nted his
desires.

About three o'clock on the Saturday afternoon he finished the length of
wall. He went home, washed, shaved, put on his Sunday coat ; and, avoiding
the kitchen, where his mother sat knitting by the fireside, strode up to the
vicarage.

It was Rosa who opened the door to him. On recognizing him she
started, and he followed her into the dining-room. He seated himself, and
began, brusquely :

" I've coom, Miss Rosa, t' speak t' Mr. Blencam."

Then added, eyeing her closely :

" Ye're lookin' sick, lass."

Her faint smile accentuated the worn, white look on her face.

" I reckon ye've been frettin' yeself," he continued, gently, " leein' awake
o' nights, hev'n't yee, noo ? "

She smiled vaguely.

" Well, but ye see I've coom t' settle t' whole business for ye. Ye thought
mabbe that I was na a man o' my word."

ANTHONY GARSTINS COURTSHIP

" but — but—"

35

I
I

I must just bear my own trouble

" No, no, not that," she protested, '

" But what then ? "

"Ye must not do it," Mr. Garstin .
the best I can " she broke out.

" D'ye fancy I'm takin' ye oot of charity ? Ye little reckon the sort o'
stuff my love for ye 's made of Nay, Miss Rosa, but ye canna draw back noo."

"But ye cannot do it, Mr. Garstin. Ye know your mother will na have
me at Houtsey .... I could na live there with your mother .... I'd sooner
bear my trouble alone, as best I can .... She 's that stem is Mrs. Garstin.
1 couldn't look her in the face .... I can go away somewhere .... I could
keep it all from uncle."

Her colour came and went : she stood before him, looking away from
him, dully, out of the window.

" I intend ye t' coom t' Hootsey. I'm na lad : I reckon I can choose my
own wife. Mother'll hev ye at t' farm, right enough : ye need na distress
yeself on that point "

" Nay, Mr. Garstin, but indeed she will not, never .... I know she will
not .... She always set herself against me, right from the first,"

"Ay, but that was different T' case is all changed, noo," he objected,
dc^gedly,

" She'll support the sight of me all the less," the girl faltered.

" Mother 'II hev ye at Hootsey — receive ye willin' of her own free wish —
of her own free wish, d'ye hear. I'll answer for that."

He struck the table with his fist, heavily. His tone of determination
awed her: she glanced at him hurriedly, struggling with her irresolution.

" I knaw hoo t' manage mother. An' now," he concluded, changing his
tone, " is yer uncle aboot t' place."

" He's up the paddock, I think," she answered.

" Well, I'll jest step oop and hev a word wi' him."

"Ve're .... ye will na tell him."

"Tut, tut, na harrowin' tales, ye need na fear, lass. I reckon cf I can
tackle mother, I can accommodate myself t' parson Blencarn."

He rose, and coming close to her, scanned her face.

" Ye must git t' roses back t' yer cheeks," he exclaimed, with a short
laugh, " I canna be takin' a ghost t' church."

She smiled tremulously, and he continued, laying one hand affectionately
on her shoulder :

" Nay, but I was but jestin'. Roses or na roses, ye'll be t' bonniest bride

36 THE SAVOY

in all Coomberland. I'll meet ye in HuUam lane, after church time, to-morrow,"
he added, moving towards the door.

After he had gone, she hurried to the backdoor furtively. His retreating
figure was already mounting the gray upland field. Presently, beyond him,
she perceived her uncle, emerging through the paddock gate. She ran
across the poultry yard, and mounting a tub, stood watching the two figures
as they moved towards one another along the brow, Anthony vigorously
trudging, with his hands thrust deep in his pocket ; her uncle, his wideawake
tilted over his nose, hobbling, and leaning stiffly on his pair of sticks. They
met ; she saw Anthony take her uncle's arm : the two, turning together,
strolled away towards the fell.

She went back into the house. Anthony's dog came towards her, slinking
-along the passage. She caught the animal's head in her hands, and bent over
it caressingly, in an impulsive«outburst of almost hysterical affection.

VII

The two men returned towards the vicarage. At the paddock gate they
halted, and the old man concluded :

" I could not hev wished a better man for her, Anthony. Mabbe the
Lord '11 not be minded to spare me much longer. After I'm gone Rosa '11 hev
all I possess. She was my poor brother Isaac's only child. After her mother
was taken, he, poor fellow, went altogether to the bad, and until she came here
she mostly lived among strangers. It's been a wretched sort of childhood for
her — a wretched sort of childhood. Ye'll take care of her, Anthony, will ye
not ? . . . Nay, but I could not hev wished for a better man for her, and
there's my hand on 't."

" Thank ee, Mr. Blencarn, thank ee," Anthony answered huskily, gripping
the old man's hand.

And he started off down the lane, homewards.

His heart was full of a strange, rugged exaltation. He felt with a
swelling pride that God had intrusted to him this great charge — to tend her ;
to make up to her, tenfold, for all that loving care, which, in her childhood,
she had never known. And together with a stubborn confidence in himself,
there welled up within him a great pity for her — a tender pity, that, chastening
with his passion, made her seem to him, as he brooded over that lonely
childhood of hers, the more distinctly beautiful, the more profoundly precious.
He pictured to himself, tremulously, almost incredulously, their married life —

ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP

37

in the winter, his return home at nightfall to find her awaiting him with a
glad, trustful smile ; their evenings, passed together, sitting in silent happiness
over the smouldering logs ; or, in summer-time, the mid-day rest in the hay
fields when, wearing perhaps a large-brimmed hat fastened with a red ribbon
beneath her chin, he would catch sight of her, carrying his dinner, coming
across tile upland.

She had not been brought up to be a farmer's wife : she was but a child
still, as the old parson had said. She should not have to work as other men's
wives worked : she should dress like a lady, and on Sundays, in church, wear
fine bonnets, and remain, as she had always been, the belle of all the parish.

And, meanwhile, he would farm as he had never farmed before, watching
his opportunities, driving cunning baj^ains, spending nothing on himself,
hoarding every penny that she might have what she wanted. . , . And, as be
strode through the village, he seemed, to foresee a general brightening of
prospects, a sobering of the fever of speculation in sheep, a cessation of the
insensate glutting, year after year, of the great winter marts throughout the
North, a slackening of the foreign competition followed by a steady revival of
the price of fatted stocks — a period of prosperity in store for the farmer at
last. . . . And the future years appeared to open out before him, spread like a
distant, glittering plain, across which, he and she, hand in hand, were called
to travel together. . . .

And then, suddenly, as his iron-bound boots clattered over the cobbled
yard, he remembered, with brutal determination, his mother, and the stormy
struggle that awaited him.

He waited till supper was over, till his mother had moved from the table
to her place by the chimney corner. For several minutes he remained
debating with himself the best method of breaking the news to her. Of a
sudden he glanced up at her : her knitting had slipped on to her lap : she was
sitting, bunched of a heap in her chair, nodding with sleep. By the flickering
light of the wood fire, she looked worn and broken : he felt a twinge of clumsy
compunction. And then he remembered the piteous, hunted look in the girl's
eyes, and the old man's words when they had parted at the paddock gate, and
he blurted out :

" I dool but what I'll hev t' marry Rosa Elencarri after all."

She started, and blinking her eyes, said :

" I was jest takin' a wink o' sleep. What was 't ye were saying, Tony ? "

He hesitated a moment, puckering his forehead into coarse rugged lines,
and fidgeting noisily with his tea cup. Presently he repeated :

38 THE SAVOY

" I doot but what TU hev t' marry Rosa Blencam after all."

She rose stiffly, and stepping down from the hearth, came towards him.

" Mabbe I did na hear ye aright, Tony." She spoke hurriedly, and
though she was quite close to him, steadying herself with one hand clutching
the back of his chair, her voice sounded weak, distant almost

" Look oop at me. Look oop into my face," she commanded fiercely.

He obeyed sullenly.

" Noo oot wi *t. What's yer meanin*, Tony ? "

" I mean what I say," he retorted doggedly, averting his gaze.

" What d'ye mean by sayin' that yeVe got t* marry her ? "

" I tell yer I mean what I say," he repeated dully.

" Ye mean yeVe bin an' put t' girl in trouble ? "

He said nothing ; but sat staring stupidly at the floor.

" Look oop at me, and answer," she commanded, gripping his shoulder
and shaking him.

He raised his face slowly, and met her glance.

" Ay, that's aboot it," he answered.

" This '11 na be truth. It '11 be jest a piece o' wanton trickery ? •*
she cried.

" Nay, but 't is truth," he answered deliberately.

" Ye will na swear t' it ? " she persisted.

" I see na necessity for swearin'."

" Then ye canna swear t' it," she burst out triumphantly.

He paused an instant ; then said quietly :

" Ay, but I'll swear t' it easy enough. Fetch t' Book."

She lifted the heavy, tattered Bible from the chimney-piece, and placed it
before him on the table. He laid his lumpish fist on it

"Say," she continued with a tense tremulousness, "say, I swear t* ye
mother, that 't is t' truth, t' whole truth, and noat but t' truth, s'help me God."

" I swear t' ye, mother, it's truth, t' whole truth, and nothin' but t* truth,
s'help me God," he repeated after her.

" Kiss t' Book," she ordered.

He lifted the Bible tp his lips. As he replaced it on the table, he burst
out into a short laugh :

" Be ye satisfied noo ? "

She went back to the chimney corner without a word.

The logs on the hearth hissed and crackled. Outside, amid the blackness
the wind was rising, hooting through the firs, and past the windows. .

ANTHONY GARSTINS COURTSHIP

39

After a long while he roused himself, and drawing his pipe from his pocket
almost steadily, proceeded leisurely to pare in the palm of his hand a lump of
black tobacco.

" We'll be asked in church Sunday," he remarked bluntly.

She made no answer.

He looked across at her.

Her mouth was drawn tight at the corners : her face wore a queer, rigid
aspect. She looked, he thought, like a figure of stone.

"Ye're not feeling poorly, are ye, mother?" he asked.

She shook her head grimly : then, hobbling out into the room, began to
speak in a shrill, tuneless voice.

"Ye talked at one time o' takin' a farm over Scarsdate way. But yc'd
best stop here. I'll no hinder ye. Ye can have t' large bedroom in t' front,
and ril move ower to what used to be my brother Jake's room. Ye knaw I've
never had no opinion of t' girl, but I'll do what 's right by her, ef I break my
sperrit in t' doin' on't. I'll mak' t' girl welcome here : I'll stand by her proper-
like : mebbe I'll finish by findin' soom good in her. But from this day forward,
Tony, ye're na son o' mine. Ye've dishonoured yeself : ye've laid a trap for me
— ay, laid a trap, that 's t' word. Ye've brought shame and bitterness on yer
ould mother in her old age. Ye've made me despise t' varra seet o' ye. Ye
can stop on here, but ye shall niver touch a penny of my money ; every
shillin' oft shall go t' yer child, or to your child's children. Ay," she went
ising her voice, " ay, ye've got yer way at last, and mebbe ye reckon
ye've chosen a mighty smart way. But time 'ull coom when ye'll regret this
day, when yc eat oot yer repentance in doost an' ashes. Ay, Lord 'ull punish
ye, Tony, chastise ye properly. Ye'll learn that marriage begun in sin. can
end in nought but sin. Ay," she concluded, as she reached the door, raising
her skinny hand prophetically, "ay, after I'm deed an' gone, ye mind ye o' f
words o' t' apostle — ' For them that hev sinned without t' law, shall also perish
without t' law." "

And she slammed the door behind her.

Hubert Crackanthokpi:.

BRETON AFTERNOON

ERE, where the breath of the scented gorse floats through the

sun-stained air,
On a steep hill-side, on a grassy ledge, I have Iain hours

long, and heard
Only the faint breeze pass in a whisper like a prayer,
And the river ripple by, and the distant call of a bird.

On the lone hill-side, in the gold sunshine, I will hush me and repose ;
And the world fades into a dream, and a spell is cast on me ;
And what was all t/ie strife about for the myrtle or the rose ?
And why have I wept for a white girl's paleness ^ passing ivory f

Out of the tumult of angry tongues, in a world alone, apart,
In a perfumed dream-land set betwixt the bounds of life and death ;
Here will I lie, while the clouds fly by, and delve a hole, where mine heart
May sleep dark down with the gorse above and red, red earth beneath :

Sleep and be quiet for an afternoon, till the rose-white Angelus

Softly steals my way from the village under the hill :

" Mother of God! Oy Misericord ! look down in pity on uSy

The weak and blindy who stand in our lights and wreak ourselves such ill!'\

Ernest Dowson. '

WILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRA-
TIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY

I. HIS OPINIONS UPON ART

I

i|HE recoil from scientific naturalism has created in our
day the movement the French call symbolisle, which, be-
ginning with the memorable " Axel," by Villiers de I'Isle
Adam, has added to drama a new kind of romance, at
once ecstatic and picturesque, in the works of M. Maeter-
linck ; and beginning with certain pictures of the pre-
Raphaelites, and of Mr. Watts and Mr. Burne-Jones, has brought into art
a new and subtle inspiration. This movement, and in art more especially,
has proved so consonant with a change in the times, in the desires of
our hearts grown weary with material circumstance, that it has begun to
touch even the great public ; the ladies of fashion and men of the world
who move so slowly ; and has shown such copious signs of being a movement,
perhaps the movement of the opening century, that one of the best known of
French picture dealers will store none but the inventions of a passionate sym-
bolism. It has no sufficient philosophy and criticism, unless indeed it has them
hidden in the writings of M. Mallarm^, which I have not French enough to
understand, but if it cared it might find enough of both philosophy and
criticism in the writings of William Blake to protect it from its opponents,
and what is perhaps of greater importance, from its own mistakes, for he was ■
certainly the first great symholiste of modern times, and the first of any time to
preach the indissoluble marriage of all great art with symbol. There had ■
been allegorists and teachers of allegory in plenty, but the symbolic imagina-
tion, or as Blake preferred to call it, "Vision," is not allegory, being "a
representation of what actually exists really and unchangeably" : a symbol is
indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp
about a spiritual flame, while allegory is one of many possible representations
of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to
imagination ; the one is a revelation, the other an amusement. It is happily

42 THE SAVOY

no part of my purpose to expound in detail the relations he believed to
exist between symbol and mind ; for in doing so I should come upon not a
few doctrines which, though they have not been difficult to many simple
persons, ascetics wrapped in skins, women who had cast away all common
knowledge, peasants dreaming by their sheep-folds upon the hills, are full of
obscurity to the man of modem culture ; but it is necessary to just touch
upon these relations, because in them was the fountain of much of the practice
and of all the precept of his artistic life.

If a man would enter into " Noah's rainbow," he has written, and " make a
friend " of one of " the images of wonder " which dwell there, and which always
entreat him " to leave mortal things," " then would he ariise from the grave
and meet the Lord in the air ; " and by this rainbow ; this sign of a covenant
granted to him who is with Shem and Japhet, "painting, poetry and music," " the
three powers in man of conversing with Paradise which the flood * of time and
space ' did not sweep away " ; Blake represente d the sh apes of beauty haunting
o ur moj Tifints. of in spiration : shapesTiel d' BSMnost for the frailest of e^ emera,
but^by hinijor ^a people older than the worlds citizens of e\exx\\\y, app<^ring
and reappearing in the minds of artists and of p oets, creating all we touch
and see by casting distorted images of themselves upon " the vegetable glass
of nature " ; and because beings, none the less symbols ; blossoms, as it were,
growing from invisible immortal roots ; hands, as it were, pointing the way into
some divine labyrinth. If "the world of imagination" was "the world of
eternity " as this doctrine implied, it was of less importance to know men and
nature than to distinguish the beings and substances of imagination from those
of a more perishable kind, created by the fantasy, in uninspired moments, out
of memory and whim ; and this could best be done by purifying one's mind, as
with a flame, in study of the works of the great masters, who were great because
they had been granted by divine favour a vision of the unfallen world, from
which others are kept apart by the flaming sword that turns every way ; and
by flying from the painters who studied " the vegetable glas^ ^ for its own sake,
and not to discover there the shadows of imperishable beings and substances,
and who entered into their own minds, not to make the unfallen world a test
of all they saw and heard and felt with the senses, but to cover the naked
spirit with " the rotten rags of memory " of older sensations. To distinguish
between these two schools, and to cleave always to the Florentine, and so
to escape the fascination of those who seemed to him to offer a spirit, weary
with the labours of inspiration, the sleep of nature, had been the struggle of the
first half of his life ; and it was only after his return to London from Felpham

I

BLAKE'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 45

in 1804 that he finally escaped from " temptations and perturbations " which
sought " to destroy the imaginative power " at " the hands of Venetian and
Flemish Demons." "The spirit of Titian," and one must always remember
that he had only seen poor engravings, and what his disciple. Palmer, has
called "picture dealers' Titians," "was particularly active in raising doubts
concerning the possibility of executing without a model ; and when once he
had raised the doubt it became easy for him to snatch away the vision time
after time," and Blake's imagination " weakened " and " darkened " until a
" memory of nature and of the pictures of various schools possessed his mind,
instead of appropriate execution " flowing from the vision itself. But now
he wrote, " O glory ! and O delight ! I have entirely reduced that spectrous
fiend to his station" — he had overcome the merely reasoning and sensual
portion of the mind — " whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for
the last twenty years of my life .... I speak with perfect confidence and
certainty of the fact which has passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven
times passed over him, 1 have had twenty ; thank God I was not altogether a
beast as he was .... suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian
Gallery of pictures," — this was a gallery containing pictures by Albert Diirer and
by the great Florentines, — " I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in
my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from mc
as by a door and window shutters. . . . Excuse my enthusiasm, or rather
madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a
pencil or graver in my hand, as I used to be in my youth."

This letter may have been the expression of a moment's enthusiasm, but
i more probably rooted in one of those intuitions of coming technical
power which every creator feels, and learns to rely upon ; for all his greatest
work was done, and the principles of his art were formulated after this date.
Except a word here and there, his writings hitherto had not dealt with the
principles of art except remotely and by implication ; but now he wrote
much upon them, and not in obscure symbolic verse, but in emphatic prose,
and explicit if not very poetical rhyme. In his " Descriptive Catalogue,"
in " The Address to the Public," in the notes on Sir Joshua Reynolds, in " The
Book of Moonlight," of which some not very dignified rhymes alone remain ;
in beautiful detached passages in " the MS. Book," he explained spiritual
art, and praised the painters of Florence and their influence, and cursed all
that has come of Venice and Holland. The limitation of his view was from
the very intensity of his vision ; he was a too literal realist of im^ination, as
others are of nature, and because he believed that the figures seen by the mind's

46 THE SAVOY

eye, when exalted by inspiration, were " eternal existences," symbols of divine
essences, he hated every grace of style that might obscure their lineaments.
To wrap them about in reflected lights was to do this, and to dwell over
fondly upon any softness of hair or flesh was to dwell upon that which was
least permanent and least characteristic, for " The great and golden rule of
art, as of life, is this : that the more distinct, sharp, and wiry the boundary
line, the more perfect the work of art ; and the less keen and sharp, the
greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism, and bungling." Inspira-
tion was to see the permanent and characteristic in all forms, and if you had
it not, you must needs imitate with a languid mind the things you saw or
remembered, and so sink into the sleep of nature where all is soft and melting.
" Great inventors in all ages knew this. Protogenes and Apelles knew each
other by their line. Raphael and Michael Angelo and Albert Diirer are
known by this and this alone. How do we distinguish the owl from the
beast, the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we
distinguish one face or countenance from another, but by the bounding line
and its infinite inflections and movements ? What is it that builds a house
and plants a garden but the definite and determinate? What is it that
distinguishes honesty from knavery but the hard and wiry line of rectitude
and certainty in the actions and intentions? Leave out this line and you
leave out life itself ; and all is chaos again, and the line of the Almighty must
be drawn out upon it before man or beast can exist" He even insisted that
" colouring does not depend on where the colours are put, but upon where the
lights and darks are put, and all depends upon the form or outline ; " meaning,
I suppose, that a colour gets its brilliance or its depth from being in light or
in shadow. He does not mean by outiine the bounding line dividing a form
from its background, as one of his commentators has though^ but the line
that divides it from surrounding space, and unless you have an overmastering
sense of this you cannot draw true beauty at all, but only " the beauty that is
appended to folly," a beauty of mere voluptuous softness, "a lamentable
accident of the mortal and perishing life," for " the beauty proper for sublime
art is lineaments, or forms and features capable of being the receptacles of
intellect," and " the face or limbs that alter least from youth to old age are
the face and limbs of the greatest beauty and perfection." His praise of a
severe art had been beyond price had his age rested a moment to listen, in
the midst of its enthusiasm for Correggio and the later Renaissance, for
Bartolozzi and for Stothard ; and yet in his visionary realism, and in his
enthusiasm for what, after all, is perhaps the greatest art, and a necessary

BLAKE'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 49

I part of every picture that is art at all, he forgot how he who wraps the vision
I lights and shadows, in irridescent or glowing colour ; having in the midst
of his labour many little visions of these secondary essences ; until form be
half lost in pattern, may compel the canvas or paper to become itself a
symbol of some not indefinite because unsearchable essence ; for is not the
Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian a talisman as powerfully chained with intel-
lectual virtue as though it were a jewel-studded door of the city seen on
Patmos ?

To cover the imperishable lineaments of beauty with shadows and reflected

lights was to fall into the power of his " Vala," the indolent fascination of nature, •

the woman divinity who is so often described in " the prophetic " books as

" sweet pestilence," and whose children weave webs to take the souls of men ;

but there was yet a more lamentable chance, for nature has also a " masculine

portion," or "spectre," which kills instead of merely hiding and is continually at

war with inspiration. To " generalize " forms and shadows, to " smooth out "

I spaces and lines in obedience to "laws of composition," and of painting;

I founded, not upon imagination, which always thirsts for variety and delights in

freedom, but upon reasoning from sensation, which is always seeking to reduce

'erything to a lifeless and slavish uniformity ; as the popular art of Blake's

day had done, and as he understood Sir Joshua Reynolds to advise, was to fall

into " Entuthon HenJthon," or " the Lake of Udan Adan," or some other of

those regions where the imagination and the flesh are alike dead, and which he

names by so many resonant fantastical names. " General knowledge is remote

knowledge," he wrote; "it is in particulars that wisdom consists, and happiness

too. Both in art and life general masses are as much art as a paste-board man

is human. Every man has eyes, nose, and mouth ; this every idiot knows. But

I he who enters into and discriminates most minutely the manners and intentions,

[the characters in all their branches, is the alone wise or sensible man, and on

I this discrimination all art is founded. ... As poetry admits not a letter that

I' is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain of sand or a blade of grass

k insignificant, much less an insignificant blot or blur."

Against another desire of his time, derivative also from what he has

Ptalled " corporeal reason," the desire for a tepid " moderation," for a lifeless

* sanity " in both art and life, he had protested years before with a paradoxical

^violence : " The roadway of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," and we

■must only " bring out weight and measure in a time of dearth." This protest ;

rried, in the notes on Sir Joshua Reynolds, to the point of dwelling almost

with pleasure on the thought that " The Lives of the Painters say that

so THE SAVOY

Raphael died of dissipation/' because dissipation is better than emotional
penury ; seemed as important to his old age as to his youth. He taught it
to his disciples, and one finds it in its purely artistic shape in a diary written
by Samuel Palmer, in 1824: ''excess is the essential vivifying spirit, vital
spark, embalming spice oPthe finest art. There are many mediums in the
means — none, oh, not a jot, not a shadow of a jot, in the end of great art In
a picture whose merit is to be excessively brilliant, it can't be too brilliant :
but individual tints may be too brilliant ... we must not begin with medium
but think always on excess and only use medium to make excess more
abundantly excessive."

These three primary commands, to seek a determinate outline, to avoid
a generalized treatment, and to desire always abundance and exuberance,
were insisted upon with vehement anger, and their opponents called again
and again " demons," and " villains," " hired " by the wealthy and the idle ; but
in private, Palmer has told us, he could find " sources of delight throughout
the whole range of art," and was ever ready to praise excellence in any school,
finding, doubtless, among friends no need for the emphasis of exaggeration.
There is a beautiful passage in " Jerusalem," in which the merely mortal part
of the mind, " the spectre," creates " pyramids of pride," and " pillars in the
deepest hell to reach the heavenly arches," and seeks to discover wisdom in
" the spaces between the stars," not" in the stars," where it is, but the immortal
part makes all his labours vain, and turns his pyramids to " grains of sand,"
his " pillars " to " dust on the fly's wing," and makes of " his starry heavens a
moth of gold and silver mocking his anxious grasp." So when man's desire to
rest from spiritual labour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation, and
memory, seem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to a
new inspiration ; and here and there among the pictures bom of sensation
and memory is the murmuring of a new ritual, the glimmering of new talis-
mans and symbols.

It was during and after the writing of these opinions that Blake did the
various series of pictures which have brought him the bulk of his fame. He
had already completed the illustrations to Young's " Night Thoughts," in
which the great sprawling figures, a little wearisome even with the luminous
colours of the original water-colour, become nearly intolerable in plain black
and white ; and almost all the illustrations to " the prophetic books," which
- have an energy like that of the elements, but are rather rapid sketches
taken while some phantasmic procession swept over him, than elaborate
compositions, and in whose shadowy adventures one finds not merely, as did

\

t

wmmmmmmmmf

Dr. Garth Wilkinson, "the hells of the ancient people, the Anakim, the
Nephalim, and the Rephaim ; . ■ . gigantic petrifactions from which the fires
of lust and intense selfish passion have long dissipated what was animal and
vital " ; not merely the shadows cast by the powers who had closed the light
from him as " with a door and window shutters," but the shadows of those who
gave them battle. He did now, however, the many designs to Milton, of which
I have only seen those to " Paradise Regained " ; the reproductions of those
to "Comus" ; published, I think, by Mr. Quaritch ; and the three or four to
" Paradise Lost " ; engraved by Bell Scott ; a series of designs which one good
judge considers his greatest work ; the illustrations to Blair's "Grave," whose
gravity and passion struggle with the mechanical softness and trivial smooth-
ness of Schiavonetti's engraving ; the illustrations to Thornton's " Virgil,"
whose influence is, I think, perceptible in the work of the little group of land-
scape painters who gathered about him in his old age and delighted to call him
master. The member of the group, whom I have already so often quoted, has
alone praised worthily these illustrations to the first Eclogue : " There is in
all such a misty and dreamy glimmer as penetrates and kindles the inmost
soul and give.s complete and unreserved delight, unlike the gaudy daylight
of this world. They are like all this wonderful artist's work, the drawing
aside of the fleshly curtain, and the glimpse which ail the most holy, studious
saints and sages have enjoyed, of the rest which remains to the people of
God." 'Now, too, he did the two great series, the crowning work of his life, " the
illustrations to the book of Job " and the designs to " The Divine Comedy."
They were commissioned from him by his patron and disciple John Linnell,
who paid him a good price, the best he had yet received ; but the material
circumstance of their origin has been often described, and is of less importance
than the influence upon his method of engraving of certain engravings of
Marc Antonio, which were shown him by Mr. Linnell, Hitherto he had pro-
tested against the mechanical "dots and lozenges" and "blots and blurs" of
Woollett and Strange, but had himself used both "dot and lozenge," " blot
and biur," though always in subordination " to a firm and determinate outline" ;
liut in Marc Antonio he found a style full of delicate lines, a style where all
was living and energetic, strong and subtle. And almost his last words, a
letter written upon his death-bed, attack the " dots and lozenges " with even
more than usually quaint symbolism, and praise expressive lines. " I know
that the majority of Englishmen are bound by the indefinite .... a line is a
line in its minutest particulars, straight or crooked. It is itself, not inter-
measurable by anything else .... but since the French Revolution " ; since

54 THE SAVOY

the reign of reason began, that is ; " Englishmen are all intermeasurable with
one another, certainly a happy state of agreement in which I do not agree."
The Dante series occupied the last years of his life ; even when. too weak to
get out of bed he worked on, propped up with the great drawing boo]k before
him. He sketched a hundred designs, but left all incomplete, soiine very
greatly so, and partly engraved seven plates, of which the Francesca and
Paolo is the most finished. It is given here instead of a photographic repro-
duction of the water-colour, although accessible in the engraved set, to show
the form the entire seri.es would have taken had he lived. It is not, I think,
inferior to any but the finest in the Job, if indeed to them, and shows in its
perfection Blake's mastery over elemental things, the swirl in which the lost
spirits are hurried, " a watery flame " he would have called it, the haunted
waters and the huddling shapes. The luminous globe, a symbol used again
in the Purgatory, is Francesca's and Paolo's dream of happiness, their " Heaven
in Hell's despite." The other three drawings have never been published before,
and appear here, as will those which will follow them, through the courtesy of
the Linnell family. The passing of Dante and Virgil through the portico of
Hell is the most unfinished and loses most in reproduction, for the flames,
rising from the half-seen circles, are in the original full of intense and various
colour ; while the angry spirits fighting on the waters of the Styx above the
sluggish bodies of the melancholy, loses the least, its daemonic energy being
in the contour of the bodies and faces. Both this and the Antaeus setting
down Virgil and Dante upon the verge of Cocytus, a wonderful piece of
colour in the original, resemble the illustrations to his "prophetic books" in
exuberant strength and lavish motion, and are in contrast with the illustrations
to the Purgatory, which are placid, marmoreal, tender, starry, rapturous. ^

All in this great series are in some measure powerful and moving, and
not, as it is customary to say of the work of Blake, because a flaming
imagination pierces through a cloudy and indecisive technique, but because
they have the only excellence possible in any art, a mastery over artistic
expression. The technique of Blake was imperfect, incomplete, as is the
technique of wellnigh all artists who have striven to bring fires from remote
summits ; but where his imagination is perfect and complete, his tedmique
has a like perfection, a like completeness. He strove to embody more subtle
raptures, more elaborate intuitions than any before him ; his imagination and
technique are more broken and strained under a great burden than the
imagination and technique of any other master. " I am," wrote Blake, " like
others, just equal in invention and execution." And again, ''No man can

BLARES ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 57

improve an original invention ; nor can an original invention exist without
execution, organized, delineated, and articulated either by God or man. . . .
I have heard people say, * Give me the ideas ; it is no matter what words you
put them into ; ' and others say, * Give me the design ; it is no matter for the
execution.' . . . Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate
words, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution."
Living in a time when tec*hnique and imagination are continually perfect
and complete, because they no longer strive to bring fire from heaven, we
forjret how imperfect and incomplete they were in even the greatest masters,
in Botticelli, in Orcagna, and in Giotto. The errors in the handiwork of
exalted spirits are as the more fantastical errors in their lives ; as Coleridge's
opium cloud ; as Villiers de Tlsle Adam's candidature for the throne of Greece \
as Blake's anger against causes and purposes he but half understood ; as the
flickering madness an Eastern scripture would allow in august dreamers ; for
he who half lives in eternity endures a rending of the structures of the mind,
a crucifixion of the intellectual body.

W. B. Yeats.

IN CARNIVAL

L'T of the multitudinous hours
Of life sealed fast for us by fate,
Are any hours that yet await
Our coming, worthy to be ours ?

Life, in her motley, sheds in showers

The rose of hours still delicate,
But you and I have come too late
Into the Carnival of Flowers.

For us the roses are scarce sweet,
And scarcely swift the flying feet

Where masque to masque the moments call ;

AU has been ours that we desired.
And now we are a little tired
Of the eternal carnival.

Arthur Syhons.

I

A CRAYON SKETCH

A-LALA-f-Tl, cried the clown, as he turned to leave the
arena with his wee pony. He wore a large false nose of
violet hue, a white sack-like costume with black spots dotted
about it, and a tiny cylinder-shaped hat poised over one car
upon an elaborate periwig. His arms waved like the sails of
a windmill, he turned suddenly to grasp the pony's tail, then
lifted it bodily in the air for a second, with another loud " Ha-lala-i-ti" made
his final bow and retired ; the pony stepping daintily backwards and bowing,
too, in obedience to its master's signal, the vast audience applauding voci-
ferously.

After a moment's pause, a bell rang, and a ponderous white horse, gay with
scarlet trappings and platform on back, was led in, and, tripping close behind,
in elaborate ballet dress, came its rider, among a troupe of boisterous
Pierrots carrying large paper hoops ; a crowd of servants closed the pro-
cession — it was one of the most attractive turns, and the stables were prac-
tically deserted.

It was very quiet there in the dim light of a lew oil lamps, only an occasional
rustle of straw, or the clank of a bridle as some restive steed pawed the ground,
or moved across its stall. Here in a long row stood horses of every description,
the uncertain light flickering on the silken coats of bay and chestnut thorough-
breds, on the shapely limbs of milk-white arabs, and the rippling mane and
tail of heavy cart-horses. Beyond these again, in smaller stalls, ponies, donkeys,
goats, and performing dogs had their quarters.

More than one head was turned when the clown's voice broke the stillness
with a cheery " Well done, Fifi." The pony walked demurely into his own
stall, waiting until his master, having discarded his false nose and diminutive
hat, pulled down a bundle of hay from the rack overhead and shook it out
before him, when Fifi rubbed himself up against his master's leg much as a cat
might have done, in a kind of grateful caress. It was a dainty little toy thing,

6o THE SAVOY

perfect in build, although the jet black crest reached little higher than the
man's knee, and he had to stoop low to stroke the shining silken coat as he
murmured, " Like it ? Ah, you rascal, you have nothing to grumble at ! "

Leaving the pony to munch his hay at leisure the clown sat himself down
on an overturned bucket, unbuttoned his white costume, loosened its collar,
and slowly wiped his thickly powdered face. From some mysterious pocket
he next extracted a flask and took a long pull at its contents, then, leaning
forward, he let his head sink upon his hands — a well-shaped head set on broad
shoulders, the neck muscles all exposed by the open collar.

Sitting so quietly here he seemed a very different being from the merry-
maker of the arena. There, with his false nose and the queer black arabesques
painted about his eyes, his face wore a look of saucy fooling, of self-satisfaction
and impudent self-assertion ; now, the black paint, carelessly smudged off, has
stuck in his eyebrows, accentuating the brilliancy of dark eyes deep set in the
deadly whiteness of his face, a palk>r for which powder alone is not responsible,
for deep lines of care are plainly visible in both cheek and brow. His expres-
sion has grown hard and stem as though he held himself severely in hand to
check some passionate outburst ; lost in thought, and thoughts evidently of no
pleasant description. Yet what should make him sad ? A handsome salary,
plenty to eat, an ung^dging supply of drinks, should surely make an earthly
paradise for this rough son of the stable, to say nothing of the applause that
greets his every action, the consciousness of his supremacy in the arena, and of
his position as the spoilt child of the company.

Thought, to such as he, is surely a mere physical function ! Why, then, this
change ? Is it possible that, apart from the animal side of his existence, there
lies within this massive frame some intuition of hidden forces, of long^ngs^
hopes, fears, and sudden gleams of passion ? Who, seeing him now, could
doubt it ? a whole elegy of pain and reproach is in those dark eyes and in that
despondent figure. Is this the real man? Was all that fooling, despite its
spontaneity, mere fooling ? Was he trying to convince himself, as well as his
audience, that his buffoonery was really amusing ? Was he laughing, not only
for the entertainment of the crowd who laughs — and pays, but also to stifle
for the moment the tears that fill his heart ?

By-and-by footsteps and the clinking of spurs resounded on the paved
floor, and a tall woman in a riding habit came through the stable, side by side
with an officer in the uniform of the Belgian Guards. As they passed the
pony's stall, laughing and talking gaily, the woman glanced sharply at the
clown, sitting there on his bucket, immovable as a statue, then, as quickly, she

«2 THE SAVOY

Without raising his eyes, the clown stooped forward to pick up a straw
from the floor ; he thrust it between his lips, closed his teeth upon it, and
muttered : " For him ? "

" That is nothing to you. Well — if you must know — ^yes. He has beeo
unlucky — ^he must back his luck once more — and to-night He shall stand
you a supper."

The clown shook his head.

" Well then, imagine the money is for me^ I ask you for it I will pay it
all back together."

Jack shook his head once more.

'' You don't want it back ? So much the better, but. Jack, don't be all
night about it, hurry up."

Her temper was rising again, but she kept it under.

''Jack, you will stand me a supper to-night?" she said. Again the
bowed head made an emphatic negation.

" Don't you care to ? " She dropped the trailing skirt, let herself slip
down on to the straw at his feet, and laid a hand on his knees :

" Don't be stupid, Jack — give over this nonsense, you know I — like you.
Lend me the money now, quickly, and " She tried to pull down his hands.

Suddenly he tossed up his head and thrust her away, not roughly, but
with the firm touch of one determined to be obeyed, then, drawing from his
pocket a clumsy purse, he poured its contents into her lap.

" There, you've got the money," he muttered, hoarsely, " now — go ! "

"Jack, after the performance " She would have touched his hand

again, but he drew it hastily back.

" Go— go, I said," he whispered, almost voiceless with emotion.

"Z« Belle Clotilde** rose slowly, gathering up her money; slowly she
walked the length of the stable, turning at the end : " Jack ! Jack ! "

She waited in vain for a word, a look, then flounced out with a shrug of
her shapely shoulders.

The clown never moved, but the pony thrust his neck over the rail of his
stall and grabbed at his arm. " Fifi ! Come along then." There was a sharp
whinny of delight, and the tiny stallion pushed up against the swing bar, all
impatience. His master stretched out his hand, unfastened it, and, once free,
Fifi trotted straight up to him, pushed himself between the clown's knees and
laid a black muzzle upon his shoulder. He seemed to know something was
amiss.

There came over the stern face an expression of intense, almost pathetic

I

THE CLOWN

joy, the tears welled up in his eyes as in those of a mother when her child of
its own accord first stretches out tiny hands to hers. " Fifi, my pet, my only
pet ! " His voice failed him and he pressed his lips against the silky mane, and
so the stablemen found them later on, Fifi cocking his ears and sweeping his
long tail to and fro in delighted satisfaction.

In the arena " La Belle Clotilde" -wzs delighting her audience by a brilliant
display "d la haute ^cole" sharing pretty equally with her handaome bay
stallion the admiration of a group of cavalry officers who stood just within the
archway. Foremost among these was the well-known figure of Captain Ren6,
glass in eye, his dandified features wreathed in smiles of approbation. Here
in the circus he was persona grata. A really good judge of horseflesh, he
took, or professed to take, as keen an interest in every fresh performer, every
novel trick, as did any member of the company. Although known to be
practically penniless, he always contrived to be in the smartest, most
extravagant set in the regiment, and even here was the most lavish of all.
None of his companions gave such champagne suppers, none was so quick to
detect the weak points of a horse, nor so ready with compliments and
bouquets for a fair iquestrieniu. It was easy enough to be generous from
a full purse, but Renii alone could stand unlimited drinks from empty
pockets. His popularity was unbounded with almost the whole staff. " La
Belle ClotUde" rode out amidst thunders of applause. The programme
announced "A marvellous somersault trick over eight horses," and Jack the
Clown, with the stereotyped grin of his profession once more upon his face,
made his bow for the second time.

He busied himself for a few moments dressing three horses into line,
playing endless tricks at the expense of the grooms, and indulging in the most
extravagant acrobatic feats ; then with a single bound he was upon the spring-
board, his lithe figure curled itself into a ball as he turned his somersault once
— twice — and landed beyond the horses with a ringing " Ha-lala-i-ti ! "

One by one, more horses were led up, until a prolonged series of somer-
saults carried him, thanks to his indefatigable muscles, across the backs of
eight big horses, and still he was not satisfied.

He cried out for two more, to the loudly expressed delight of the
audience.

There was a momentary deliberation among the stablemen, for none of
the other horses were trained for this particular trick, but Jack was not to be
denied, he held up two fingers imperatively and evoked a roar of laughter
with the words, " Two ! two more horses, not donkeys like yourselves I twa

64 THE SAVOY

horses !" The ring master gave a sign of assent, and to fill up the pause Jack
pretended to fall off the board, stood on his head, and proceeded to wri^le
himself through the tan to the side of the horse farthest from him. Hand
over hand he mounted by its tail, and then stood in well-feigned alarm upon
its back. Taking off his hat, he spun it upon his chin, his nose, twirled it
round and round, flung it in the air, catching it now on one foot, now on the
other, now again on his head, flung it up again, missed it, grabbed at it with
one hand, and as he jumped once more into the ring tossed it right away. It
made a wide curve and landed — was it merely by accident ? — full in the face
of Captain Rend The clown laughed. " The clown's muzzle ! " he cried, and
just then the two fresh horsed were trotted in. They were not used to being
forced into such close line, and fretted at the contact with the others ; first
one, then another got restive, until the whole ten were fidgeting and
nervous.

There was a fresh burst of music from the orchestra, a cry of " Steady,
steady, now ! " from the grooms, and once more a white figure shot from the
spring-board. *There was a wild scream, a panic-stricken rush of horses and
stablemen, and in the ring there lay a shapeless, inert mass ; a flutter of white
frilling, a quiver of painted eyelids — a dead clown.

Roman Mathieu-Wierzbinski.

O'SULLIVAN RUA TO MARY
LAVELL

HEN my arms wrap you round, I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded in the world ;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled ;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread

By dreaming ladies upon cloth

That has made fat the murderous moth ;

The roses that of old time were

Woven by ladies in their hair.

Before they drowned th«r lovers' eyes

In twilight shaken with low sighs ;

The dew-cold lilies ladies bore

Through many a sacred corridor

Where a so sleepy incense rose

That only God's eyes did not close :

For that dim brow and lingering hand

Come from a more dream-heavy land,

A more dream-heavy hour than this ;

And, when you sigh from kiss to kiss,

I hear pale Beauty sighing too,

For hours when all must fade like dew

Till there be naught but throne on throne

Of seraphs, brooding, each alone,

A sword upon his iron knees,

On her most lonely mysteries.

W. B. Yeats.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

11

jIETZSCHE was by temperament a philosopher after the
I manner of the Greeks. In other words, philosophy was not
i§i to him, as to the average modem philosopher, a matter of
books and the study, but a life to be lived. It seemed to
him to have much less concern with " truth" than with the
essentials of fine living. He loved travel and movement, he
loved scenery, he loved cities and the spectacle of men, above all, he loved
solitude. The solitude of cities drew him strongly ; he envied Heraclitus his
desert study amid the porticoes and peristyles of the immense temple of
Diana. He had, however, his own favourite place of work, to which he often
alludes, the Piazza di San Marco at Venice, amid the doves, in front of the
strange and Ijeautiful structure which he " loved, feared, and envied " ; and
here in the spring, between ten o'clock and mid-day, he found his best
philosophic laboratory.

It was in Italy that Nietzsche seems to have found himself most at home,
although there are no signs that he felt any special sympathy with the
Italians, that is to say in later than RenMssance days. For the most part he
possessed very decided sympathies and antipathies. His antipathy to his
own Germans lay in the nature of things. Every prophet's message is primarily
directed to his own people. And Nietzsche was unsparing in his keen
criticism of the Germans. He tells somewhere with a certain humour how
people abroad would ask him if Germany had produced no great thinker or
artist, no really good book of late, and how with the courage of despair he
would at last reply, " Yes, Bismarck ! " Nietzsche was willing enough to
recognize the kind of virtue personified in Bismarck. But with that recogni-
tion nearly all was said in favour of Germany that Nietzsche had to say.
There is little in the German spirit tliat answered to his demands. He
admired clearness, analytic precision, and highly oi^anized intell^nce, light,
and alert. He saw no sufficient reason why profundity should lack a fine
superficies, nor why strength should be ungainly. His instinctive comparison

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

69

\

I

for a good thinker was always a good dancer. As a child he had been struck
by seeing a rope-dancer, and throughout life dancing seemed to him the
image of the finest culture, supple to bend, strong to retain its own
equilibrium, an exercise demanding the highest training and energy of all the
muscles of a well-knit oiganism. But the indubitable intellectual virtues of
the bulky and plodding German are scarcely those which can well be
symbolized by an Otero or a Caicedo. "There is too much beer in the
German intellect," Nietzsche said. For the last ten centuries Germany has
wilfully stultified herself; " nowhere else has there been so vicious a misuse of
the two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity," to which he was
inclined to add music. (" The theatre and music," he remarked in " Die
Frohliche Wissenschaft," " are the haschisch and betel of Europeans, and the
history of the so-called higher culture is lai^ely the history of narcotics.")
" Germans regard bad writing," he said, " as a national privilege ; they do not
write prose as one works at a statue, they only improvise." Even " German
virtue" — and this was the unkindest cut of all — had its origin in eighteenth
century France, as its early preachers, such as Kant and Schiller, fully
recognized. Thus it happens that the German has no perceptions — coupling
his Goethe with a Schiller, and his Schopenhauer with a Hartmann — -and no
tact, " no finger for nuances" his fingers are all claws. Nietzsche regarded it as
merely an accident that he was himself born in Germany, just as it was merely
an accident that Heine the Jew, and Schopenhauer the Dutchman, were bom
there. Yet, as I have already hinted, we may take these utterances too
seriously. There are passages in his works — though we meet them rarely—
which show that Nietzsche realized and admired the elemental energy, the
depth and the contradictions in the German character ; he attributed them
largely to mixture of races.

Nietzsche was not much attracted to the English. It is true that he
names Landor as one of the four masters of prose this century has produced,
while another of these is Emerson, with whom he had genuine affinity,
although his own genius was keener and more passionate, with less sunny
serenity. For Shakespeare, also, his admiration was deep. And when he
had outgrown his early enthusiasm for Schopenhauer, the fine qualities
which he still recognized in that thinker — his concreteness, lucidity, reason-
ableness — seemed to him English. He was less flattering towards English
thought. Darwinism, for instance, he thought, savoured too much of the
population question, and was invented by English men of science who were
oppressed by the problems of poverty. The struggle for existence, he said,

70 THE SAVOY

is only an exception in nature ; it is exuberance, an even reckless superfluity,
which rules. For English philosophic thought generally he had little but
contempt. J. S. Mill was one of his '' impossibilities ; " the English and
French sociologists of to-day, he said, have only known d^enerating types
of society, devoid of oi^anizing force, and they take their own debased
instincts as the standard of social codes in general. Modem democracy,
modern utilitarianism, are lai^ely of English manufacture, and he came at
last to hate them both. During the past century, he asserted, they have-
reduced the whole spiritual currency of Europe to a dull plebeian level, and
they are the chief causes of European vulgarity. It is the English, he also
asserted — George Eliot, for instance — who, while abolishing Christian belief,
have sought to bolster up the moral system which was created by Christianity,
and which must necessarily fall with it It is, moreover, the English, who
with this democratic and utilitarian plebeianism have seduced and perverted
the fine genius of France.

Just as we owe to England the vulgarity which threatens to overspread
Europe, so to France we owe the conception of a habit of nobility, in every
best sense of the word. On that point Nietzsche's opinion never wavered.
The present subjection of the French spirit to this damnable Anglo-mania, he
declared, must never lead us to forget the ardent and passionate energy, the
intellectual distinction, which belonged to the France of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The French, as Nietzsche always held, are the one
modem European nation which may be compared with the Greeks. In
'' Menschliches, Allzumenschliches " he names six French writers — Montaigne,
La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyfere, Fontenelle (in the " Dialc^ues des Morts "),
Vauvenargues, Chamfort — who bring us nearer to Greek antiquity than any
other group of modem authors, and contain more real thought than all the
books of the German philosophers put together. The only French writer
of the present century for whom he cared much (putting aside M^rim^
whom he valued as a master of style, and perhaps as the author of ^ Carmen '')
was Stendhal, who possesses some of the characters of the earlier group.
The French, he points out, are the most Christian of all nations, and have
produced the greatest saints. He enumerates Pascal (''the first among
Christians, who was able to unite fer/our, intellect, and candour ; — think of
what that means ! "), F6nelon, Mme. de Gu3^n, Bmno, the founder of the
Trappists, who have flourished nowhere but in France, the Huguenots, Port-
Royal — ^truly, he exclaims, the great French freethinkers encountered foemen
worthy of their steel ! The land which produced the most perfect types of

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

71

Anti-Christianity prcxluced also the most perfect types of Christianity. He
defends, also, that seeming superficiality which in a great Frenchman, he
says, is but the natural epidermis of a rich and deep nature, while a great
German's profundity is too often strangely bottled up from the light in a
dark and contorted phial.

I have briefly stated Nietzsche's feeling as regards each of the three
chief European peoples, because we are thus led up to the central points of
his philosophy — his attitude towards modern religion and his attitude towards
modem morals. We are often apt to regard these matters as of little practical
importance ; we think it the reasonable duty of practical social [xilitics to
attend to the immediate questions in hand, and leave these wider questions
to settle themselves. Rightly or wrongly, that was not how Nietzsche looked
at the matter. He v/as too much of a philosopher, he had too wide a sense
of the vital relation of things, to be content with the policy of tinkering
society, wherever it seems to need mending most badly, avoiding any reference
to the whole. That is our English method, and no doubt it is a very sane
and safe method, but, as we have seen, Nietzsche was not in sympathy with
English methods. His whole significance lies in the thorough and passionate
analysis with which he sought to dissect and to dissolve, first, " German
culture," then Christianity, and lastly, modem morals, with all that these involve.

It is scarcely necessary to point out, that though Nietzsche rejoiced in the
title of freethinker, he can by no means be confounded with the ordinary
secularist. He is not bent on destroying religion from any anaesthesia of the
religious sense, or even in order to set up some religion of science which is
practically no religion at all. He is thus on different ground from the great
freethinkers of France, and to some extent of England. Nietzsche was him-
self of the stuff of which great religious teachers are made, of the race of
apostles. So when he writes of the founder of Christianity and the great
Christian types, it is often with a poignant sympathy which the secularist can
never know; and if his knife seems keen and cruel, it is not the easy
indifferent cruelty of the pachydermatous scoffer. When he analyzes the
souU of these men and the impulses which have moved them, he knows with
what he is dealing : he is analyzing his own soul.

A mystic Nietzsche certainly was not ; he had no moods of joyous resigna-
tion. It is chiefly the religious ecstasy of active moral energy that he was at
one with. The sword of the spirit is his weapon rather than the merely
defensive breastplate of faith. St. Paul is the consummate type of such
religious forces, and whatever Nietzsche wrote of that apostle — the inventor

72 THE SAVOY

of Christianity, as he calls him — is peculiarly interesting. He hates him
indeed, but even his hatred thrills with a tone of intimate sympathy. It is
thus in a remarkable passage in '* Morgenrothe," where he tells briefly the
history and struggles of that importunate soul, so superstitious and ytX.
so shrewd, without whom there would have been no Christianity. He
describes the self-torture of the neurotic, sensual, refined "Jewish Pascal,"
who flagellated himself with the law that he came to hate with the hatred of
one who had a genius for hatred ; who in one dazzling flash of illumination
realized that Jesus by accomplishing the law had annihilated it, and so
furnished him with the instrument he desired to wreak his passionate hatred
on the law, and to revel in the freedom of his joy. Nietzsche possesses a
natural insight in probing the wounds of self-torturing souls. He excels also
in describing the effects of extreme pain in chasing away the mists from life,
in showing to a man his own naked personality, in bringing us face to face
with the cold and terrible fact It is thus that, coupling the greatest figure in
history with the g^atest figure in fiction, he compares the pathetic utterance
of Jesus on the cross — " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " —
with the disillusionment of the dying Don Quixote, Of Jesus himself he
speaks no harsh word, but he regarded the atmosphere of Roman decay and
languor — ^though very favourable for the production of fine personalities — as
ill-adapted to the development of a great religion. The Gospels lead us into
the atmosphere of a Russian novel, he remarks in one of his last writings, " Der
Antichrist," an atmosphere in which the figure of Jesus had to be coarsened to
be understood, and became moulded in men's minds by memories of more
familiar types — prophet, Messiah, wonder-worker, judge ; the real man they
could not even see. " It must ever be a matter for regret that no Dostoievsky
lived in the neighbourhood of this most interesting cUcadent^ I mean some one
who could understand the enthralling charm of just this mixture of the sublime,
the morbid, and the child-like." Jesus, he continues, never denied the world,
the state, culture, work ; he simply never knew or realized their existence ;
his own inner experience — " life," " light," " truth " — ^was all in all to him.
The only realities to him were inner realities, so living that they make one
feel " in Heaven " and " eternal ; " this it was to be " saved." And Nietzsche
notes, as so many have noted before him, that the fact that men should bow
the knee in Christ's name to the very opposite of all these things, and con-
secrate in the ** Church" all that he threw behind him, is an insoluble
example of historical irony. " Strictly speaking, there has only been one
Christian, and he died on the cross. The Gospel died on the cross."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

73

There may seem a savour of contempt in the allusion to Jesus as an
"interesting decadent" and undoubtedly there is in " Der Antichrist" a
passionate bitterness which is not found in Nietzsche's earlier books. But he
habitually used the word decadent in a somewhat extended and peculiar sense.
The decadent, as Nietzsche understood him, was the product of an agt; in which
virilit>' was dead and weakness was sanctified ; it was so with the Buddhist as
well as with the Christian, they both owe their origin and their progress to
"some monstrous disease of will." They sprang up among creatures who
craved for some " Thou shalt," and who were apt only for that one form of
energy which the weak possess, fanaticism. By an instinct which may be
regarded as sound by those who do not accept his disparagement of either,
Nietzsche alwaj'S coupled the Christian and the anarchist ; to him they were
both products of decadence. Both wish to revenge their own discomfort on
this present world, he asserted, the anarchist immediately, the Christian at the
last day. Instead of feeling, " / am worth nothing," the dicadent says, " Life
is worth nothing," — a terribly contagious state of mind which has covered the
world with the vitality of a tropical jungle. It cannot be too often repeated,
Nietzsche continues, that Christianity was bom of the decay of antiquity, and
on the degenerate people of that time it worked like a soothing balm ; their
eyes and ears were sealed by age and they could no longer understand
Epicurus and Epictetus. At such a time purity and beneficence, large
promises of future life, worked sweetly and wholesomely. But for fresh young
barbarians Christianity is poison. It produces a fundamental enfeeblemcnt of
such heroic, childlike and animal natures as the ancient Germans, and to that
enfeeblement, indeed, we owe the revival of classic culture ; so that the
conclusion of the whole matter is here, as ever, Nietzsche remarks, that "it is
impossible to say whether, in the language of Christianity, God owes more
thanks to the Devil, or the Devil to God, for the way in which things have
come about." But in the interaction of the cla-ssic spirit and the Christian
spirit, Nietzsche's own instincts were not on the side of Christianity, and as
the years went on he expresses himself in ever more unmeasured language.
He could not take up the " Imitation of Christ" — the very word " imitation "
being, as indeed Michelet had said before, the whole of Christianity— without
physical repugnance. And in the "Gdtzendaramerung" he compares the
Bible with the Laws of Manu (though at the same time a.sserting that it is a
sin to name the two books in the same breath) : " The sun lies on the whole
book. All those things on which Christianity vents its bottomless vulgarity —
procreation, for example, woman, marriage — are here handled earnestly and

74 THE SAVOY

reverently, with love and trust I know no book in which so many tender and
vgracious things are said about women as in the Laws of Manu ; these gray-
beards and saints have a way of being civil towards women which is perhaqw
not overdone." Again in " Der Antichrist " — ^which represents, I repeat, the
unbalanced judgments of his last period — he tells how he turns from Paul
with delight to Petronius, a book of which it can be said k tutto festo^
'immortally sound, immortally serene." In the whole New Testament, he
adds, there is only one figure we can genuinely honour — that of Pilate.

On the whole, Nietzsche's attitude towards Christianity was one of
repulsion and antagonism. At first he appears indifferent, then he becomes
calmly judicial, finally he is bitterly hostile. He admits that Christianity
possesses the virtues of a cunningly concocted narcotic to soothe the leaden
griefs and depressions of men whose souls are physiologically weak. But
from first to last there is no sign of any genuine personal sympathy with the
religion of the poor in spirit. Epicureanism, the pagan doctrine of salvation,
had in it an element of Greek energy, but the Christian doctrine of salvation,
he declares, raises its sublime development of hedonism on a thoroughly
morbid foundation. Christianity hates the body; the first act of Christian
triumph over the Moors, he recalls, was to close the public baths which they
had everywhere erected. " With its contempt for the body Christianity was
the greatest misfortune that ever befell humanity." And at the end of " Der
Antichrist " he sums up his concentrated hatred : '' I condemn Christianity ; I
raise against the Christian Church the most terrible accusation that any
accuser has ever uttered. It is to me the most profound of all thinkable
corruptions."

It is scarcely necessary to add that Nietzsche's condemnation of
Christianity extended to the Christian God. He even went so far as to assert
that it was the development of Christian morality itself — " the father-confess(»'
sensitiveness of the Christian conscience translated and sublimed into a
scientific conscience " — which had finally conquered the Christian God. He
held, however, that polytheism had played an important part in the evolution
of culture. Gods, heroes, supernatural beings generally, were inestimable
schoolmasters to bring us to the sovereignty of the individual. Polytheism
opened up divine horizons of freedom to humanity. " Ye shall be as Gods,"
But it has not been so with monotheism. The doctrine of a single God, in
whose presence all others were false gods, favours stagnation and unity of
type ; monotheism has thus perhaps constituted " the greatest danger which
humanity has had to meet in past ages." Nor are we yet freed from its

FRIEDRTCH NIETZSCHE

75

Influence, " For centuries after Buddha died men showed his shadow in a
cave — a vast terrible shadow. God is dead : but thousands of years hence
there will probably be caves in which his shadow may yet be seen. And we
e must go on fighting that shadow!" How deeply rooted Nietzsche
believed faith in a god to be is shown by the fantastic conclusion to
* Zarathustra." A strange collection of Ueberwensclun — the men of the
future — are gathered together in Zarathustra 's cave i two kings, the last of
the popes — thrown out of work by the death of God — and many miscellaneous
creatures, including a donkey. As Zarathustra returns to his cave he hears
the sound of prayer and smells the odour of incense ; on entering he finds the
Uederniensc/ten all on their knees intoning an extraordinary litany to the
donkey, who has "created us all in his own image."

In his opposition to the Christian faith and the Christian God, Nietzsche

ibiy no means stands alone, however independent he may have been in the

method and standpoint of his attack. But in his opposition to Christian

(morality he was more radically original. There is a very general tendency

among those who reject Christian theology to shore up the superstructure of

Christian morality which rests on that theology. George Eliot, in her

writings at all events, has been an eloquent and distinguished advocate of this

process ; Mr. Myers, in an oft-quoted passage, has described with considerable

melodramatic vigour the " sibyl in the gloom " of the Trinity Fellows' Garden

|M Cambridge, who withdrew God and Immortality from his grasp, but, to

^his consternation, to!d him to go on obeying Duty. Nietzsche would have

ipathized with Mr. Myers. What George Eliot proposed was one of those

impromises so dear to our British minds. Nietzsche would none of it.

cnce his contemptuous treatment of Geoi^e EHot, of J, S, Mill, of Herbert

ipencer, and so many more of our favourite intellectual heroes who have

iriven to preserve Christian morality while denying Christian theology,

ietzsche regarded our current moral ideals, whether formulated by bishops

by anarchists, as alike founded on a Christian basis, and when that founda-

ion is sapped they cannot stand.

The motive of modern morality is pity, its principle is altruistic, its motto
l^ove your neighbours as yourself," its ideal self-abnegation, its end the
atest good of the greatest number. All these things were abhorrent to
ietzsche, or, so far as he accepted them, it was in forms which gave tliem new
ilues. Modern morality, he said, is founded on an extravagant dread of
ourselves primarily, secondarily in others. Sympathy is fellow-
Fering ; to love one's neighbour as oneself is to dread his pain as we dread

76 THE SAVOY

our own pain. The religion of love is built upon the fear of pain. " On n'est
bon que par la pitii ; " the acceptance of that doctrine Nietzsche considers
the chief outcome of Christianity, although, he thinks, not essential to
Christianity, which rested on the egoistic basis of personal salvation : " One
thing is needful." But it remains the most important by-product of Christi-
anity, and has ever been gaining strengfth. Kant stood firmly outside the
stream, but the French freethinkers, from Voltaire onwards, were not to be
outdone in this direction by Christians, while Comte with his "Vivre pour
autrui " even out-Christianized Christianity, and Schopenhauer in Germany,
J. S. Mill in England, carried on the same doctrine.

Both the sympathetic man and the unsympathetic man, Nietzsche argues,
are egoists. But the unsympathetic man he held to be a more admirable kind
of egoist. It is best to win the strength that comes of experience and suffering,
and to allow others also to play their own cards and win the same strength^
shedding our tears in private, and abhorring soft-heartedness as the foe of all
manhood and courage. To call the unsympathetic man "wicked," and the
sympathetic man " good," seemed to Nietzsche a fashion in morals, a fashion
which will have its day. He believed he was the first to point out the danger
of the prevailing fashion as a sort of moral impressionism, the outcome of the
hyperaesthesia peculiar to periods of decadence. Not indeed that Christianity
is, or could be, carried out among us to its fullest extent : " That would be a
serious matter. If we were ever to become the object to others of the same
stupidities and importunities which they expend on themselves, we should
flee wildly as soon as we saw our * neighbour ' approach, and curse sympathy
as heartily as we now curse egoism." Our deepest and most personal griefs,
Nietzsche remarks elsewhere, remain unrevealed and incomprehensible to
nearly all other persons, even to the " neighbour " who eats out of the same
dish with us. And even though my grief should become visible, the dear
sympathetic neighbour can know nothing of its complexity and results, of the
org^ic economy of my soul. That my grief may be bound up with my
happiness troubles him little. The devotee of the " religion of pity " will heal
my sorrows without a moment's delay ; he knows not that the path to my
Heaven must lie through my own Hell, that happiness and unhappiness are
twin sisters who grow up together, or remain stunted together.

" Morality is the mob-instinct working in the individual." It rests,
Nietzsche asserts, on two thoughts : " the community is worth more than the
individual," and " a permanent advantage is better than a temporary
advantage ; " whence it follows that all the advantages of the community are

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE jj

ireferable to those of the individual. Morality thus becomes a string of

legative injunctions, a series of " Thou shalt nots," with scarcely a positive
^4X>minand amongst them ; witness the well-known table of Jewish command-
l-Hncnts. Now Nietzsche could not endure mere negative virtues. He resented
^the subtle change which has taken place in the very meaning of the word
"virtue," and which has perverted it from an expression of positive masculine
qualities into one of merely negative feminine qualities. In his earliest essay
he referred to " active sin " as the Promethean virtue which distinguishes the
Aryans. The only moral codes that commended themselves to him were
those that contained positive commands alone : " Do this ! Do it with all
heart, and all your strength, and all your dreams !— and all other things
shall be taken away from you ! " For if we are truly devoted to the things

lat are good to do we need trouble ourselves little about the things that are
to leave undone.

Nietzsche compared himself to a mole boring down into the ground and
undermining what philosophers have for a couple of thousand years considered
the very surest ground to build on — the trust in morals. One of his favourite
linethods of attack is by the analysis of the " conscience." He points out that
whatever we were regularly required to do in youth by those we honoured
lOnd feared created our " good conscience." The dictates of conscience, how-
tever ui^ent, thus have no true validity as regards the person v/ho experiences
^em. " But," some one protests, " must we not trust our feelings ? " " Yes."
^phes Nietzsche, "trust your feelings, but still remember that the inspiration

rhich springs from feelings is the grandchild of an opinion, often a false one,
and in any case not your own. To trust one's feelings — that means to yield
more obedience to one's grandfather and grandmother and their grandparents
^Qian to the gods within our own breasts ; our own reason and our own ex-
rience," Faith in authority is thus the source of conscience ; it is not the
(voice of God in the human heart but the voice of man in man. The sphere of
ifae moral is the sphere of tradition, and a man is moral because he is
dependent on a tradition and not on himself. Originally everything was
within the sphere of morals, and it was only possible to escape from that
sphere by becoming a law-giver, medicine-man, demigod — that is to say by
making morals. To be customary is to be moral, — I still closely follow
Nietzsche's thought and expression, — to be individual is to be wicked. Every
kind of originality involves a bad conscience. Nietzsche insists with fine
eloquence, again and again, that every good gift that has been given to man
put a bad conscience into the heart of the giver. Every good thing was once

78 THE SAVOY

new, unaccustomed, immoral^ and gnawed at the vitals of the finder like a
worm. Every new doctrine is wicked. Science has always come into the
world with a bad conscience, with the emotions of a criminal, at least of a
smuggler. No man can be disobedient to custom and not be immoral, and
feel that he is immoral. The artist, the actor, the merchant, the freethinker,
the discoverer, were once all criminals, and were persecuted, crushed, rendered
morbid, as all persons must be when their virtues are not the virtues idealized
by the .community. Primitive men lived in hordes, and must obey the horde-
voice within them. The whole phenomena of morals are animal-like, and
have their origin in the search for prey and the avoidance of pursuit

Progress is thus a gradual emancipation from morals. We have to
recognize the services of the men who fight in this struggle against morals,
and who are crushed into the ranks of criminals. Not that we need pity
them. " It is a n^'w justice that is called for, a new mot (Tordre. We need
new philosophers. The moral world also is round. The moral world also has
its antipodes, and the antipodes also have their right to exist A new world
remains to be discovered — and more than one ! Hoist sail, O philosophers 1 "

" Men must become both better and wickeder^ So spake Zarathustra ;
or, as he elsewhere has it, " It is with man as with a tree, the higher he would
climb into the brightness above, the more vigorously his roots must strive
earthwards, downwards, into the darkness and the depths-^into the wicked."
Wickedness is just as indispensable as goodness. It is the plough^are of
wickedness which turns up and fertilizes the exhausted fields of g^oodness.
We must no longer be afraid to be wicked ; we must no longer be afraid to be
hard. " Only the noblest things are very hard. This new command, O my
brothers, I lay upon you — become hard."

In renewing our moral ideals we need also to renew our whole conception
of the function and value of morals. Nietzsche advises moralists to change
their tactics : " Deny moral values, deprive them of the applause of the crowd,
create obstacles to their free circulation ; let them be the shame-faced secrets
of a few solitary souls ; forbid morality ! In so doing you may perhaps
accredit these things among the only men whom one need have on one's side,
I mean heroic men. Let it be said of morality to-day as Meister Eckard
said : * I pray God that he may rid me of God ! ' " We have altogether over-
estimated the importance of morality. Christianity knew better when it placed
"grace" above morals, and so also did Buddhism. And if we turn to literature,
Nietzsche maintains, it is a vast mistake to suppose that, for instance, great
tragedies have, or were intended to have, any moral effect Look at " Macbeth,"

8o THE SAVOY

in himself the creature and the creator : there is in him the stuff of things, the
fragmentary and the superfluous, clay, mud, madness, chaos ; but there is also
in him the creator, the sculptor, the hardness of the hammer, the divine
blessedness of the spectator on the seventh day." Do you pity, he asks,
what must be fashioned, broken, forged, refined as by fire? But our pity
is spent on one thing alone, the most effeminate of all weaknesses — pity.
This was the source of Nietzsche's admiration for war, and indifference to its
horror ; he regarded it as the symbol of that spiritual warfare and bloodshed
in which to him all human progress consisted. He might, had he pleased,
have said with the Jew and the Christian, that without shedding of blood
there shall be no remission of sins. But with a difference, for as he looked
at the matter, every man must be his own saviour, and it is his own blood
that must be shed ; there is no salvation by proxy. That was expressed in
his favourite motto : Virescit volnere virtus.

Nietzsche's ideal man is the man of Epictetus, as he describes him in " Mor-
genrothe," the laconic, brave, self-contained man, not lusting after expression
like the modern idealist. The man whom Epictetus loved hated fanaticism,
he hated notoriety, he knew how to smile. And the best was, added
Nietzsche, that he had no fear of God before his eyes ; he believed firmly in
reason, and relied, not on divine grace, but on himself. Of all Shakespeare's
plays, " Julius Caesar " seemed to Nietzsche the greatest, because it glorifies
Brutus ; the finest thing that can be said in Shakespeare's honour, Nietzsche
thought, was that — aided perhaps by some secret and intimate experience —
he believed in Brutus and the virtues that Brutus personified. In course of
time, however, while not losing his sympathy with stoicism, it was Epi-
cureanism, the heroic aspects of Epicureanism, which chiefly appealed to
Nietzsche. He r^arded Epicurus as one of the world's greatest men, the
discoverer of the heroically idyllic method of living a philosophy ; for one to
whom happiness could never be more than an unending self-discipline, and
whose ideal of life had ever been that of a spiritual nomad, the methods of
Epicurus seemed to yield the finest secrets of good living. Socrates, with his
joy in life and in himself, was also an object of Nietzsche's admiration*
Among later thinkers, Helvetius appealed to him strongly. Goethe and
Napoleon were naturally among his favourite heroes, as were Alcibiades and
Caesar. The latest great age of heroes was to him the Italian Renaissance.
Then came Luther, opposing the rights of the peasants, yet himself initiating
a peasants' revolt of the intellect, and preparing the way for that shallow
plebeianism of the spirit which has marked the last two centuries.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 8i

Latterly, in tracing the genealogy of modern morals, Nietzsche's opinions
hardened into a formula. He recognized three stages of moral evolution :
first, the fire-moral 'period oi primitive times, when the beast of prey was the
model of conduct, and the worth of an action was judged by its results.
Then came the moral period, when the worth of an action was judged not
by its results, but by its origin ; this period has been the triumph of what
Nietzsche calls slave-morality, the morality of the mob ; the goodness and
badness of actions is determined by atavism, at best by survivals ; every man
is occupied in laying down laws for his neighbour instead of for himself, and
all are tamed and chastised into weakness in order that they may be able to
obey these prescriptions. Nietzsche ingeniously connected his slave-morality
with the undoubted fact that for many centuries the large, fair-haired aristo-
cratic race has been dying out in Europe, and the older down-trodden race —
short, dark, and broad-headed — has been slowly gaining predominance. But
now we stand at the threshold of the extra-moral period. Slave-morality,
Nietzsche .asserted, is about to give way to master-morality ; the lion will
take the place of the camel. The instincts of life, refusing to allow that any-
thing is forbidden, will again assert themselves, sweeping away the feeble
n^[ative democratic morality of our time. The day has now come for the
man who is able to rule himself, and who will be tolerant to others not out
of his weakness, but out of his strength ; to him nothing is forbidden, for he
has passed beyond goodness and beyond wickedness.

Havelock Ellis.

FROM THE "IGNEZ DE CASTRO"
OF ANTONIO FERREIRA'

Chorus I.
lEN youthful Love was bom
Into the world came life,
The stars received their light, the sun his rays
The Heavens glowed red that morn,
And, vanquished in the strife.

Darkness revealed all beauties to the gaze.
She that, high-throned, in fee
Possesses the third sphere.
Bom of the angry sea.
Gave Love unto the world, her offspring dear.

'Tis Love adoms the earth

With grass and babbling bums.

Paints every flower, each tree with foh'age weights,
Fierce war to peace and mirth.

Harshness to softness turns.

Melting in thousand loves a thousand hates.
The lives by death, the dure,

O'ercome, he doth renew ;
The world's gay portraiture,

So fresh and lovely, unto him is due.

' This was tlie fiist notable tragedy produced in modern Europe under the immediate
influence of Greek art and methods. Its subject — the death of D. Ignei de Castro — is one
that has been treated by authors of all nations since the death of Ferreira, but never so
happily, if the episode in Canto 111. of the Lusiads be excepted. The Chorus here trans-
lated comes from the First Act, and is a marked contrast to that in the Second. The former
is a tight and lovely lyric ; the latter a grave and grandiose chorus in Sapphics. The one
was written to be sung, while nothing but recitation could do justice to the other.

FROM ""IGNEZ DE CASTRO'' OF ANTONIO FERREIRA 83

His flames let no man fear.

Though furious they rise,

For they are loving ; gentle Love and sweet
Will dry each amorous tear

That wells up through the eyes,

And gladly grant when love-sick folk entreat.
Gold arrows, gleaming bright.

In his full quiver ring,
Full deadly to the sight,

Yet they are shot by Love and love they bring.

From every lyre on high

Let loving ditties sound.

And Love's soft name the ambient air serene.
Let tears and sorrow fly.

Let peace and joy abound,
And make the rivers clear, the vales amene.
Let the sweet lyre of Love

Fill Heaven with accents rare.
And the great God above,

That love inspires, thence crown thee, Castro fair.

Cfiorus IL

Rather a Tyrant blind.

Bom of the poet's brain,
Fierce lust, deceit unkind,

God of the foolish, son of sloth ; the bane
And common wreck designed
Of glory and fair fame ;
He hurls, with reckless aim.
On every side his darts,
And Mars is burning, while Apollo smarts.

Winging his hurried flight

He sets the earth on fire ;
His shafts of deadly might

The more they miss, work mischief yet more dire.

84 THE SAVOY

He glories to unite

Tempers the most opposed,

And those for love disposed

And like, to separate ;

His thirst nor tears nor blood can ever sate.

Into the tender breast

Of some pure modest maid,
As time and means suggest,

He enters softl}'', or with force arrayed.
Fires long time set at rest

He raises to a glow.

Cool blood and age's snow

He kindles, and his dart,

Shot by some beauteous eye, pierces the heart

Thence spreads the poisonous blight

Coursing through every vein ;
In dreams of fond delight

The soul indulges, weaving webs inane.
Chaste modesty takes flight

And virile constancy ;

Death, following misery.

Enters in softest guise.

The heart is hardened and the reason dies.

Who took the iron mace,

Once great Alcides* pride.
Seating, in bondmaid's place.

The lion-tamer at a maiden's side ?
The spoils of that dread chase

Who changed to soft and fine

Attire of feminine

Estate, and made him learn.

With horny hand, the distaff douce to turn ?

A thousand pictures show,

To shapes a myriad turned,
Great Jupiter fallen low.

Far from the Heavens, which, leaving, he has spumed.

FROM ''IGNEZ DE , CASTRO'' OF ANTONIO FERREIRA 85

How strong the charm that so
The heart of man converts !
How potent that subverts
By craft the loftiest sprite,
And plunges in vile sin, a woeful plight !

The Trojan's mighty fame

What other fire consumed ?
Or what Spain's holy name

To hand down mournful memories hath doomed ?
Blind love the twain overcame ;

A cruel Boy that day

Triumphed and both did slay,

With blood and lives untold,

To sate a foolish appetite ill-sold.

How blest is he that knew

With stout heart to oppose
The arrow as it flew.

Or quench the flames when first they angry rose !
Beloved of God a few

Have gained from Heaven such grace^

The most, with tearful face.

Repent, whene'er they mind,

Their vain submission to the Infant blind.

Edgar Prestage.

BERTHA AT THE FAIR

HO, dear Madame, it has never greatly interested me to be
taken for a poet And that is one reason why I have for the
most part shunned poetical persons : you are the exception,
of course, but then you are beautiful, and I forgive you for
writing poetry : and have lived as much of my life as I could
among the ladies who read penny novelettes. And yet I
too have been taken for a poet. Shall I tell you atx)ut it, before I tell you
about Bertha, who did not know what a poet was ?

It was one midnight, in London, at the comer of a somewhat sordid
street. I was standing at the edge of the pavement, looking across at the upper
windows of a house opposite. That does not strike you, dear Muse of ima-
ginary cypresses, as a poetical attitude ? Perhaps not ; and indeed I was
thinking little enough of poetry at the time. I was thinking only of someone
who had quitted me in anger, five minutes before, and whose shadow I seemed
to see on the blind, in that lighted upper room of the house opposite. I stood
quite motionless on the pavement, and I gazed so intently at the blind, that,
as if in response to the urgency of my will, the blind was drawn aside, and she
looked out She saw me, drew back, and seemed to speak to someone inside ;
then returned to the window, and pulling down the blind behind her, leant
motionless against the glass, watching me intently. In this manner we gazed
at one another for some minutes, neither, at the time, realizing that each could
be seen so distinctly by the other. As I stood there, unable to move, yet
in mortal shame of the futile folly of such an attitude, I realized that my
appearance was being discussed by some loungers not many yards distant
And the last, decisive, uncontroverted conjecture was this : " He's a poet ! "
That point settled, one of them left the group, and came up to me. He was a
prize-fighter, quite an amiable person ; I welcomed him, for he talked to me, and
so gave me an excuse for lingering ; he was kind enough to borrow a shilling
of me, before we parted ; and the action of slipping the coin into his hand gave
me the further excuse of turning rapidly away, without a last look at the
motionless figure watching me from the lighted window. Ah, that was a long

BERTHA AT THE FAIR 87

^ime ago, Madame ; but you see I remember it quite distinctly, not, perhaps,
"because it was the occasion when I was taken for a poet. Do you mind if I
't^lk now about Bertha ? I met Bertha much more recently, but I am not sure
'fchat I remember her quite so well.

This was at Brussels. It was in the time of the Kermesse, when, as you

Vcnow, the good Flemish people are somewhat more boisterously jolly than

^jsual ; when the band plays in the middle of the market-place, and the people

^walk round and round the band-stand, looking up at the Archangel Michael

on the spire of the H6tel de Ville, to see him turn first pink and then green, as

the Bengal lights smoke about his feet ; when there are processions in the

streets, music 2ind torches, and everyone sets out for the Fair. You have seen

the Gingerbread Fair at Paris ? Well, imagine a tiny Gingerbread Fair, but

with something quite Flemish in the solid gaiety of its shows and crowds, as

solid as the " bons chevaux de boisl' Verlaine's " tons chevaux de botsi* that

go prancing up and down in their rattling circles. Quite Flemish, too, were

the little mysterious booths, which you have certainly not found in Paris,

Madame, and which I should certainly not have taken you to see in Brussels.

You paid a penny at the door, and, once inside, were scarcely limited in regard

to the sum you might easily spend on very little. What did one see ? Indeed,

very little. There was a lady, perched, for the most part, in an odd little alcove,

raised a bed's height above the ground. As a rule, she was not charming, not

even young ; and her conversation was almost limited to a phrase in which

" Mon petit bMfice " recurred, somewhat tiresomely. No, there was not much

to .see, after all.

But Bertha was different. I don't know exactly what was the odd fascina-
tion of Bertha, but she fascinated us all : the mild Flemish painter, with his
golden beard ; our cynical publisher, with his diabolical monocle ; my
fantastical friend, the poet ; and, Madame, be sure, myself She was tall and
lissom : she apologized for taking the place of the fat lady usually on exhibi-
tion ; she had strange, perverse, shifting eyes, the colour of burnt topazes, and
thin painful lips, that smiled frankly, when the eyes began their queer dance
under the straight eyebrows. She was scarred on the cheek : a wicked Baron,
she told us, had done that, with vitriol ; one of her breasts was singularly
mutilated ; she had been shot in the back by an Englishman, when she was
keeping a shooting-gallery at Antwerp. And she had the air of a dangerous
martyr, who might bewitch one, with some of those sorceries that had turned,
somehow, to her own hurt.

We stayed a long time in the booth. I forget most of our conversation.

88 THE SAVOY

But I remember that our publisher, holding the monocle preposterously
between his lips, announced solemnly : "/i? suis unfoite!* Then he generously
shifted the credit upon the two of us who were most anxious to disclaim the
name. Bertha was curious, but bewildered. She had no conception of what
a poet was. We tried French, Flemish, and English, poem, verse, rhyme, song,
everything, in short, and in vain. At last an idea struck her : she understood :
we were caf(£-chantant singers. That was the nearest she ever came.

Do but think of it, Madame, for one instant : a woman who does not so
much as know what a poet is ! But you can have no idea how grateful I was
to Bertha, nor how often, since then, I have longed to see her again. Never
did any woman so charm me by so celestial an ignorance. The moments I
spent with Bertha at the Fair repaid me for I know not how many weary hours
in drawing-rooms. Can you understand the sensation, Madame, the infinite
relief? .... And then she was a snake-like creature, with long cool hands.

THE BALLAD OF A BARBER

ERE is the tale of Carrousel,
The barber of Meridian Street.
He cut, and coiffed, and shaved so well.
That all the world was at his feet.

The King, the Queen, and all the Court,
To no one else would trust their hair,
And reigning belles of every sort
Owed their successes to his care.

With carriage and with cabriolet
Daily Meridian Street was blocked,
Like bees about a bright bouquet
The beaux about his doorway flocked.

Such was his art he could with ease
Curl wit into the dullest face ;
Or to a goddess of old Greece
Add a new wonder and a grace.

All powders, paints, and subtle dyes,
And costliest scents that men distil.
And rare pomades, forgot their price
And marvelled at his splendid skill.

The curling irons in his hand
Almost grew quick enough to speak,
The razor was a magic wand
That understood the softest cheek.

F

92 THE SAVOY

Yet with no pride his heart was moved ;
He was so modest in his ways !
His daily task was all he loved,
And now and then a little praise.

An equal care he would bestow
On problems simple or complex ;
And nobody had seen him show
A preference for either sex.

How came it then one summer day,
Coiffing the daughter of the King,
He lengthened out the least delay
And loitered in his hairdressing ?

The Princess was a pretty child.
Thirteen years old, or thereabout.
She was as joyous and as wild
As spring flowers when the sun is out

Her gold hair fell down to her feet
And hung about her pretty eyes ;
She was as lyrical and sweet
As one of Schubert's melodies.

Three times the barber curled a lock.
And thrice he straightened it again ;
And twice the irons scorched her frock,
And twice he stumbled in her train.

His fingers lost their cunning quite.
His ivory combs obeyed no more ;
Something or other dimmed his sight,
And moved mysteriously the floor.

He leant upon the toilet table,
His fingers fumbled in his breast ;
He felt as foolish as a fable,
And feeble as a pointless jest

THE BALLAD OF A BARBER

He snatched a bottle of Cologne,

And broke the neck between his hands ;

He felt as if he was alone,

And mighty as a king's commands.

The Princess gave a little s
Carrousel's cut was sharp and deep ;
He left her softly as a dream
That leaves a sleeper to his sleep.

He left the room on pointed feet ;
Smiling that things had gone so well.
They hanged him in Meridian Street.
You pray in vain for Carrousel.

Aubrey Beardslev.

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE

TtHE editor asks me to say "a few words" about "Simplifica-
tion" — a subject which seems somehow to have got itself
connected with my name, though I should think it only
comparatively-speaking small part of my programme.
I remember, in that highly moral tale "Sandford and
Merton," that there is an affecting account of a certain
Miss Simpkins who, after some frivolous charmer has executed the usual
fireworks on the piano, sits down and plays " a few simple chords " which
"bring tears to all eyes." I suppose our editor expects me to produce a
similarly touching effect on the readers of the " Savoy."

But I really have no sentimentalities to give utterance to on this subject,
nor any moral tale to unfold. People (of the kind that carry reticules)
sometimes coming into my study and findii^ it a moderately bright room
with a few objects in it worth looking at, take it upon themselves to say,
" but I thought it was against your prindpUs to have ornaments ;" and then
I have to explain, for the hundredth time, that I have never said anything of
the kind, that I have never set up duty as gainst beauty, and that, anyhow, I
have not the smallest intention of boxing my life, or that of others, within
the four comers of any mere cut-and-dried principle.

It is just a question of facts, and of the science of life. And the facts
are these. People as a rule, being extremely muddle-headed about life, are
under a fixed impression that the more they can acquire and accumulate in
any department, the " better off" they will be, and the better times they will
have. Consequently when they walk down the street and see nice things in
the shop windows, instead of leaving them there, if they have any money in
their pockets, they buy them and put them on their backs or into their
mouths, or in their rooms and round their walls ; and then, after a time,
finding the result not very satisfactory, they think they have not bought the
right things, and so go out again and buy some more. And they go on doing
this in a blind habitual way till at last their bodies and lives are as muddled
up as their brains are, and they can hardly move about or enjoy themselves

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE

95

for the very multitude of their possessions, and impediments, and duties, and
responsibilities, and diseases connected with them.

The origin of this absurd conduct is of course easy to see. It is what the
scientific men call an " atavism." In the case of most of us, our ancestors, a
few generations back, were no doubt actually in want (and if one goes far
enough this is true of everybody) — in want of sufficient food or sufficient
clothing. Consequently it became a fixed "principle" in those days, when
you saw a chance, to accumulate as much as you could ; which principle at
last became a blind habit. Savages when they come across a good square
meal— in the shape of a dead elephant— just stuff as much as ever they can.
knowing it doubtful when they will get another chance. In decent societj'
nowadays the fixed idea of stuffing has been got over to some extent, but
the other fixed ideas mostly remain ; and, without knowing exactly why.
people cram their houses, their rooms, their shelves, with " goods," their backs
with clothes, their fingers with rings, and so forth, to the last point that can be
borne.

Of course if the good folk really enjoy doing so, it's all right. But, from
the wails and groans one constantly hears, this seems to be an open question.
The gratification of fixed ideas, unlike the gratification of a living need,
seems to be a kind of mechanical thing, supposed to be necessary, but
■inly burdensome, and bringing little enjoyment with it. And progress
seems frequently to consist in just getting rid of such ideas as best one can, by
sui^ical operation or otherwise.

There are different ways of dealing with this question of Accumulation,
which so harasses modern life. The first may be called the method of
Thoreau. Thoreau had an ornament on his shelf, but finding it wanted
dusting every day, and having to do the dusting himself, he ultimately came
Ito the conclusion that it wasn't worth the trouble, and threw the ornament out
of the window. That was perfectly sensible. There was no question exactly
of sentiment or of principle, but just a question of fact — was the pleasure
worth the trouble ?

Personally I like to have a few things of beauty about mc ; and as it

'happens that I dust and clean out my room myself, I know exactly how much

luble each thing in it is, and whether the trouble is compensated by the

'pkasure. It is merely a personal question. Some jjeoplc might like their

ims crowded up with objects, and still be willing to spend a good part of

if lives in keeping them in order ; but no one surely could quarrel with

on that account.

96 THE SAVOY

That is all easy enough to see. But now there is another class of folk
who, experiencing the pleasure of having certain possessions, are not willii^
to undergo the labour of keeping them in order. They want the pleasure
without the trouble or pains attaching to it That is, they want to make
water run up-hill. They therefore buy servants and attendants to keep the
things in order for them. And they do this because they think the method
will be a " simplification " in their sense, f>., that it will save them trouble.
But in general they think this only because they are muddle-headed and do
not think clearly.

The problem is not escaped ; for most people, being partly human,
cannot have other folk living under the same roof without feeling bound to
and even concerned about them, to consider them and their needs, their
interests, their troubles, sicknesses, and so forth. Thus, after a time, they
find that instead of reducing complications they have only added a fresh
responsibility to their lives. Having got a housemaid to look after your
rooms for you, you find that she has to be instructed constantly in her work,
that even so she does things wrong, breaks the china, and quarrels with the
other servants ; that she has an invalid mother at home, and a young man in
a neighbouring public house, and no end of griefs and grievances, fads and
fancies, of her own ; so that now, instead of dusting and cleaning your own
rooms, the only difference is that you have to dust and clean the housemaid
every day, which turns out to be a much more complicated and serious job.

If on the other hand, as is the case with some people, you are really a little
less than human, and are in the habit of treating your servants and attendants
as a kind of cattle, and can consent to live in a house with them on such terms
— ^you are still no better off by this method. For naturally they revenge them-
selves on you at every point. In one of those suburban villas whose endless
rows run out like rays of sweetness and light from the centre of the civilized
world, I heard the other day a charming duet between husband and wife. It
was founded on the old subject " Brutes ! " at last exclaimed the husband.
" They do all they can to annoy you. Now there's that cook, she's always
singing — always singing at her work. And I'm certain she does it because she
knows I don't like it ! " Well, of course you are lucky if you come in for
nothing worse than singing — though that, no doubt, is trying enough when out
of tune. But it is exhausting work anyhow, trying to make water run up-hill,
and at the best it is work that's never finished.

All this however does not prove that servants are necessarily a mistake.
Because you get rid of one idie fixe it does not follow that you must enslave

THE SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE 97

yourself to its opposite. If you were sufficiently attached to your attendants it
might turn out that the pleasure their presence gave you compensated for the
trouble they caused. And it might happen that you were really doing more
useful and congenial work in dusting your housemaid's mind than in dusting
your room. In this case there would be a sensible and natural exchange
of services, with a gain to both parties ; and the relation would actually be a
" simplification/' These things are so very obvious that I feel quite ashamed
to put them down ; but it is not my fault that I am called upon to do so.

Life is an art, and a very fine art. One of its first necessities is that you
should not have tnore material in it — more chairs and tables, servants, houses,
lands, bank-shares, friends, acquaintances, and so forth, than you can really
handle. It is no good pretending that you are obliged to have them. You
must cut that nonsense short It is so evidently better to give your carriage
and horses away to someone who can really make use of them than to turn
yourself into a dummy for the purpose of " exercising " them every day. It is
so much better to be rude to needless acquaintances than to feig^ you
like them, and so muddle up both their lives and yours with a fraud.

In a well-painted picture there isn't a grain of paint which is mere
material. All is expression. And yet life is a greater, art than painting
pictures. Modem civilized folk are like people sitting helplessly in the
midst of heaps of paint-cans and brushes — and ever accumulating more;
but when they are going to produce anything lovely or worth looking at
in their own lives. Heaven only knows !

In this sense Simplification is the first letter of the alphabet of the Art of
Life. But it is only that ; it is no more than the first letter. And as there are
so many other letters to learn, I trust that we may now pass on ; and that we
may be spared further queries on the subject from our friends, with reticules or
without.

Edward Carpenter.

THE FUTURE PHENOMENON

{From the Frettck of SUpkane MaUarmf)

5 HE pale sky that lies above a world ending in decrepitude
will perhaps pass away with the clouds : the tattered purple
of the sunset is fading in a river sleeping on the horizon
Rubmei^ed in sunlight and in water. The trees are tired ;
and, beneath their whitened leaves (whitened by the dust
of time rather than by that of the roads,) rises the canvas
house of the Interpreter of Fast Things : many a lamp awaits the twilight and
lightens the faces of an unhappy crowd, conquered by the immortal malady
and the sin of the centuries, of men standing by their wretched accomplices
quick with the miserable fruit with which the world shall perish. In the
unquiet silence of ever>' eye supplicating yonder sun, which, beneath the water,
sinks with the despair of a cry, listen to the simple patter of the showman :
" No sign regales you of the spectacle within, for there is not now a painter
capable of presenting any sad shadow of it. I bring alive (and preserved
through the years by sovereign science) a woman of old time. Some folly,
original and simple, an ecstasy of gold, I know not what 1 which she names
her hair, falls with the grace of rich stuffs about her face, which contrasts
with the bloodlike nudity of her lips. In place of the vain gown, she has a
body ; and the eyes, though like rare stones, are not worth the look that leaps
from the happy flesh : the breasts, raised as if filled with an eternal milk, are
pointed to the sky, and the smooth limbs still keep the salt of the primal
sea," Remembering their poor wives, bald, morbid, and full of horror, the
husbands press forward : and the wives, too, impelled by melancholy curiosity,
wish to see.

When all have looked upon the noble creature, vestige of an epoch already
accursed, some, indifTerent, not having the power to comprehend, but others,

A LITERARY CAUSERIE:

ON SOME NOVELS, CHIEFLY FRENCH

NOVEL used once to be a story. When the story required
padding, the novelist would introduce descriptions of
scenery, philosophical reflections, and other irrelevant
matters. To-day, especially in France, the country of
good fiction, a novel is rather an essay, in which the padding
consists of irrelevant fragments of story, introduced when
the descriptions and reflections run short Take, for instance, Zola's last
book, the immense, fatiguing " Rome," as fatiguing as a Cook's personally
conducted tour through the actual city. It has been said that Zola has
written a bad story, that his talent is in collapse. Not in the least He has
not tried to write a story at all, he has (unfortunately for his readers) written
an encyclopaedical essay on Rome, on the Rome of the Caesars, of the Popes
of the Renaissance, of the modem Kings ; on Catholicism as a system, on its
social and political influence, on its ancient history and its prospects for the
future ; on the Rome which survives in architecture, and the Rome which
survives in its cardinals ; but a story, no. The essay is not merely of immense
length, it is of great ability ; it is full of ideas, admirable in its arrangement
and interpretation of facts. But its effect is that of a canvas all background,
a canvas in which the figures have not been fitted in. Do but contrast it for
a moment with that exquisite novel of Goncourt, " Madame Gervaisais," in
which the very soul of Rome seems to animate the pages. Never was a
background more elaborately, more delicately painted, with a more precise
and unwearying care of detail ; yet the book, with all its marvellous descrip-
tions, is first of all a study of the soul of a woman, in its communion with that
invading and conquering soul of the eternal city. The soul is a " particle *'
with which Zola has never greatly troubled himself. His priest, who visits
Rome in order to see the Pope and prevent the interdiction of his book, is not
so much as a coherent bundle of sensations. He acts, at most, as the
" personal conductor " of Cook's tour. In the tiny mesh of intrigue which he

I

I

I

A LITERARY CAUSERIE

finds himself caught in, there is just one quality to be commended, yet with
reserve. As I was reading the book, nothing struck me more than the
mastery of what might be called the atmosphere of character, as well as of
surroundings. These Boccaneras and the rest, they are undoubtedly Italians,
not Frenchmen dressed up in Italian garb ; they have the voice and gesture
of their race. Yet after all is not this one piece the more of that talent for
exteriority which is certainly the great, conspicuous talent of Zola? It is
something to paint the tint of the Italian, But that is only the beginning of
creation. Othello, though you play him with a blackened face, is universal
jealousy, not merely a Jealous Moor. And you may play him without his
properties, and only the costumier will be the loser.

Another, and a far greater novel, in which the revolt against the story is
carried with finer violence to a further point of conquest, is Huysmans' " En
Route," of which a translation, written and published by Mr. Kegan Paul, has
just appeared ; a translation as conspicuously and conscientiously admirable as
Mr. Vizetelly's translation of " Rome " is conspicuously and carelessly in-
competent Here is a novel which is but the record of wanderings through
all the churches of Paris and a brief rest in a Trappist retreat ; and it is a
great book. For it is the .study of a conscience, a new Pilgrim's Progress
through all the devious and perilous pathways of the soul. Mr. Kegan Paul
tells us he has translated it partly for purposes of edification, at which
M. Huysmans, if I know him rightly, will perhaps be a little amused. But it
is a book, certainly, which, as a document of the soul, is more valuable than
any book lately writtea A story ? Not in the least ; less of a story than
" Rome ; " but, in the modern acceptance of the word, it would appear,
a novel.

I sometimes wonder whether there is any reason for keeping the tradition
of a name when we have abandoned the tradition of the thing which that
name once signiBed, Look at Balzac (and English readers are for the first
time able to look at something which is approximately Balzac, in the complete
translation which we owe to the enterprise of Messrs. Dent), and you will see
that, in spite of the interminable pages of essay- writing, of the prodigal casting
adrift of ideas and reflections, all through this vast analysis of the Human
Comedy, it is always for Balzac, as it was always for his less complex pre-
decessors, the story which counts. And yet Balzac certainly led the way (with
Stendhal, to whom, no less, the story is everything) to that final development
in which story evaporates in analysis (as in Bourget), in atmosphere (as in
Pierre Lot!), or, as I have already said, in essay-writing and the confessions of

I02 THE SAVOY

the soul. Even in England, where ideas penetrate slowly, it is coming to be
felt that, at all events, the point of view of a novel is of considerable importance,
not only as we see that question of the point of view, crudely and with intention
to instruct, in a writer such as Mrs. Humphrey Ward, but as we see it also,
artistically and with a studious, unbiassed intelligence, in Mr. Thomas Hardy's
" Jude, the Obscure." In all this it must be for individual preference to decide
how much we lose, how much we gain. Scarcely in some fantastical country
of romance is it now possible for a narrative, which is only a narrative, to be
written by any writer of brains. Dumas, if he returned to France, would have
to publish his stories in the feuilleton of the " Petit Journal." Is this because
we are getting too serious to be amused, too conceited with our seriousness to
even desire amusement ? Possibly, and no doubt it is all for the good of the
race, the benefit of the wiser among us. It gives, certainly, new opportunities
of approach to the vivid thinker on life, who had once to content himself with
the meagre platform and the scanty audience of the essay. But, much as I
may personally prefer " En Route " to " Monte Cristo," it is a little difficult
for me to speak of them both under the same name, or to feel that the former
has any right to the title of the latter. It is merely a question of terms, but I
think terms are better for conveying a precise sense. And if, not merely
" Monte Cristo," but " Le Pfere Goriot," or " Le Rouge et le Noir," or " L'Edu-
cation Sentimentale," even, is to be described as a novel, then " En Route," if
we call it a novel, must be called a bad novel. And yet it is undoubtedly a
great book.

Arthur Symons.

NOTE

In consequence of Mr. Beardsley's severe and continued illness, we
have been compelled to discontinue the publication of " Under the
Hill," which will be issued by the present publisher in book form,
with numerous illustrations by the author, as soon as Mr. Beardsley
is well enough to carry on the work to its conclusion .

THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS

THE SAVOY.

No. 1. JANUARY, 1896. 170 pages, 18 full-page Illustrations, and
5 Illustrations in the Text.

No. I contains literary contributions by G. Bernard Shaw, Frederick Wedrnore, Paul Verlainc,
ax Beerbohm, Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley, Havelock Ellis, W. B. Yeats, Rudolf Dircks,
athilde Blind, Joseph Penneil, Humphrey James, Selwyn Image, and the Editor. The JUustra-
ins include work by Charles H. Shannon, Charles Conder, Joseph Pennell, Louis Oury,
. Rothenstein, F. Sandys, J. McNeill Whistler, Max Beerbohm, Jacques E. Blanche, J. Lemmen,
d Eleven Drawings by Aubrey Beardsley.

Crown 4I0, bound in pictorial cover, 2s. td. net.

i

No. a. APRIL, 1896. 303 pages, and 30 fuU-page Illustrations.

r No. 2 includes a story entitled " A Mere Man " (by a new writer) and literary contributions
■ Cesare Lombroso ("A Mad Saint"), Paul Verlaine("My Visit to Ixindon"), Edmund Gosse,
- B. Yeats, Havelock Ellis (" Friedrich NieUsche"), Frederick Wedmore, Selwyn Image, Ernest
owson, John Cray, Vincent O'SuUivan, Leila Macdonald, Aubrey Beardsley, and the Editor.
t»e illustrations include work by Joseph Pennell, C. H. Shannon, VV. T. Horton, W. Rolhenstein,
t\. Caresme, Albert Sterner, W. Sickert, J. Lemmen, Max Beerbohm, and Aubrey Beardsley-
rinted at the Chiswick Press.

Crown 4to, bound in new pictorial cover, n. (ui. net.

EXTRACTS FROM PRESS NOTICES ON No. a OF "THE SAVOY."

" Tht new number of ' The Savoy ' Ls printed admirnbly liy the Chiswick Pif^, and \i perhipa ilie chMpesI
ling thil has been done at half-a-crown. Indeed, Mr. C. H. Shannon's lilht^aph of * The Dive would itxtif—
™d Ll is but one of many illiistrBlions — be cheap »l the money r il is an eiijuisite thing. . . . Whalever may \k saiil
E*u)il one or other of the contiibutions, this new quuterljr miscetlany, as a whole, has great chaiacta. ' The
•*oy ' hu ciUEht oa."—Acadrmy.

" Tlie best things in it are Mr. Aubrey Bcardsley's pictures in black and white . . . . hia drawings are a never-
oding source a( pleasure and admiration. He contributes a cover and title-page to this number and four new pen-
')d-iak drawings, all eittaordjnaiy in the daring wilh which they sail so near the grotesque without ever steppin;;
'XMi the line of beauty. Ferliapa the most noticeable of ihem is ' The Rape of uie Locli,' a subjecl which eivti
(r. Beardsley a good opportunity of showing his peculiar power of putting romance into the stilTness and slatelmeis
^ the artificial politeness of the eighteenth century .... The number, as a whole, keeps up the character of the
ibltcatitni as an organ of riotous cleverness, and is most entertaining when taken least seriously." — Scelsman.

" Everything in it by W. B. Yeats is artistic and readable. John Gray's poem of ' The Forge ' is splendid, and
^broso's 'Mad Saint' is quite in the best vein of those lalpHriirt experiences you sometimes read in ' Thi:
ioeieenth Century' .... Undoubtedly the best thing in the numlier is the triptych on Paul Vetlaine, a series of
•*e ardeles — one in which Edmund Gosse tells how he tracked the great decadent to his lair in the CafiJ Solcil d'Or,
'c in which Mr. Veats tells of his aftemcKin tea with Verlalne, and one (translated) by Verlaine himself, telling all
;aut his visit to London in 1893, and giving a verl»tira report of his lecture, which is unique and valuable."—
•u^ffw Evming Nrws.

" It would not be diRicult. however, (o detect differences between even the unreformed ' Yellow Book ' and the
^ publication, though il might be rather mote difficult to describe them briefly. For one thing there is a more
■nouncedly literary quality in ' The Savoy,' for which, in spile of a fair amount of crudcness, it deserves credit
■ . Altc^^her, 'The Savoy' is a creditable performance, and typical of the art and literature of the day."—
■M^mff Rtiord.

"The second number of 'The Savoy' reaches us in a mere worthy and attractive guise than did the first, Tim
P«r is better, while the printing bears the hall-mark of the Chiswick Press. The contents are good. Qiulc a
•ay of really excellent writers." — Baekstllmg.

" A]loeether, ' The Savoy ' is worth half-a-crown, and is upholding the traditions which the ' Yellow Book '
*ted, and which it soon lost sight of. The January part of the 'Yellow Book' was of special inlercit to
^*oeei*''>i '■^^ "'* P^rt, just out, is state and humdrum, and not to be compared to ' The Savoy ' in inlercit and
-'^ctiveoess."^ — Glaigvju Quit.

" Unequalled originality, magnificence, and beauty of design and brilliance of eneculion, all these has Mr.
=4idsley got, and would-be imitators would do well to bear in mind his other qualifications in addition to that of

k

io6 THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS

originality of conception. There are several beautiful samples of his work in this issae, notably — 'The Ri^ of the
Lock ' and one of the illustrations to his extraordinary story, ' Under the Hill.' " — Northern Figaro,

" * The Savoy ' is ever interesting. One never knows what new eccentricity it will bring ; it has the diann of
giving the unexpected." — New York Echo,

*' In *The Savoy,' Na 2, we have the same quest of the new and strange, pursued by writers of greator ▼itality.
The editor, Mr. Arthur Symons, professes himself delighted with the ' flattenng reception ' accorded to the fint
number. It is to be feared, therefore, that he will be less pleased with the reception likdy to be ^ven to this seooodf
which is in so many ways — and not least in paper and print — a better number than the first ; for it runs a great risk
of being praised and bought. . . . Subjects and writers are alike well chosen — subjects we want to read aboat, treated
b^ writers it is always a pleasure to read. The article, perhaps, of most interest at the moment is Mr. Havdock
Ellis's, on Nietzsche, who it is prophesied is to make the next philosophiad invasion of England. • . • Mr. Aithnr

one, why not Patchouli ? * " — DcUly Courier,

*' Le Courrier Francois reproduit des images du num^ro dernier du Saooy cette si artistiqne xevne doot j'li
deji essay^ de faire T^Ioge ^ propos du num^ro I pani il y a trois mois. Ce laps de trois mois me paralt use chote
excellente pour une revue ^ tendances formelles, qui ne se contente pas de quelques pajgjes d'amusement l^ger, luis
qui veut que chacun de ses fascicules soit un volume int^ressant. £t si le Sovoy des vt premier jour ne nous avait
paru une revue excellente, je dirais que le num^ro d'aujourd'hui est en progr^ II faudrait insister sur cette forme (k
publication, volumineuse, avec de nombreuses illustrations, que nous n^vons pas en France, et oue les Aqgltii
n'avaient iusqu'id, me semble-t-il, que dans le genre populaire. ... La contribution de notes sur Verlaine^ le piss
grand poete fran^ais contemporain, plus connu, comme il convient, en Angleterre qu'en France, est aussi abondante
que dans le premier num^ro. . . . Arthur Symons traduit un article de Verlaine lui-m6me : ' Ma visite k Loodies,'
plein de notes substantielles et de citations. II se trouve que les vers reproduits dans cet article forment le plus fire
choix d'apr^ Toeuvre du po^te. II y a li une dizaine de pieces qui sont justement celles qui les amis de<VexlaJDe
savent par cceur. Je veux insister sur une nouvelle de W.-B. Yeats, ' Rosa Alchemica,' oh se marque une prfoocaDttkn
des choses occultes digne de nous int^resser. Une revue actuelle ne serait pas complete sans le soud oe oei
recherches bizarres que notre ^poque a remises en honneur. II souffle un vent d'occultisme sur la fin de oe siicle
positif. Le r^it que fait W.-B. Yeats est celui d'une sorte d'initiation, avec des details fort curieux, et la prean
d'une Erudition profonde cach^e sous le charme d'un style des plus color^. Les illustrations sont aussi nombreuses
et curieuses que dans le premier num^ro. II est bien entendu que la plus grande part des images sont dues k Aubrey
Beardsley."-— Gabriel db Lautrec in the Courrier Francois.

Nocturnes and Pastorals. Poems by A Bernard

Mi ALL.

Four Hundred copies on Large Post 8vo deckle-edged paper, bound in dark green ctodi, at
Five Shillings net per copy. Printed at the Chiswick Press.

• •

'* The clearness and daintiness of many of his verse pictures remind one of the silver-^int in a kindred ait
One of the prettiest and sincerest books of verse that have come from the press for some time." — Gieugofw HorM

"A series of impressive sonnets. . . . Brings to a conclusion a volume that shows throughout a studiooiH
cultivated gift." — Scotsman, m

'*A book which vibrates from cover to cover with poetry which has been genuinely felt and spont
uttered." — Mr. Richard Lb Gallibnne« in The Star,

London Nights. Poems by Arthur Symons.

Five Hundred Small Paper copies on Large Post 8vo deckle-^dged paper, bound in d*^
green cloth, at Six Shillings net per copy ; and 50 Large Paper copies on Royal 8vo handn mai^^
paper, bound in dark green buckram, at One Guinea net per copy. Printed at the Chiswick ^"-^^^-

des

au contraire

Beau

possibl

sait sourire et tMuliner sans jamais

Verlainb, in the Retme Encychpidique,

THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS lOr

Silhouettes. By Arthur Symons.

Second edition. Carefully revised and entailed by the addition of Nineteen New Poems.
Uniform in style with " London Nights." 400 Small Paper copies at Five Shillings net per copy ;
and 15 Large Paper copies at One Guinea net per copy. Printed at the Chiswick Press.

" Mr. Arthur Symons' ' Silhouetles ' are gracefnl and musical poems, wilh ihe finish beseeming (heir liriefiiets.
They are choicely executed miDiatuies rather than silhouettes. Foi Ihe especial quality which almost all possess — and
tome in a great d^ree-^here is no other description so appropriate as that va^e word 'charm.' . . . Mr. Symons
may be ftankly accepted as a genuine ^ixX."^Aihenawn.

" In their richness of suggestion and felicity of presentment Ihey remind one of the work of Mr. Whistler.
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THE SAVOY— NO IV

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LITERARY CONTENTS

PAGE

BEAUTY S HOUR, A Phantasy. By O. Shakespear. (/« Tivo Parts) . ii
WILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE

COMEDY.

II. His Opinions on Dante. (The Second of Three Articles by

W. B. Yeats) 25

''VENITE, DESCEND AMUS:' A Poem by Ernest Dowson . .41

TWO, FOOLISH HEARTS. A Scene of Rustic Life. By George Morley 45
IN PIOUS MOOD. A Translation by Osman Edwards into English Verse

of Emile Verhaeren's Poem " Pieusement " 56

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE— III (The Third of Three Articles by

Havelock Ellis) 57

STELLA MALIGNA. A Poem by Arthur Symons 64

THE D YING OF FRANCIS DONNE. A Study. By Ernest Dowson 66
THREE SONNETS. {Hawker of Morwenstow.—Mothef AntC: Foundress of

the Shakers. — ^ilf««j/^r; a.d. 1534.) By Lionel JohKson . • • 75

THE GINGERBREAD FAIR AT VINCENNES' A Colour Study.

By Arthur Symons 79

THE SONG OF THE WOMEN. A Wealden Trio. By Ford Madox

HUEFFER 85

DOCTOR AND PATIENT. A Story by Rudolf Dircks .... 87
A LITERARY CAUSERIE:—On a Book of Verses. By Arthur Symons 91
NOTE 94

THE SAVOY— NO IV

12 THE SAVOY

before, and that it was time I owned myself defeated. I was beginning to
remark that nothing short of death would induce me to do so, when Lady
Harman came in, and Gerald was somewhat abruptly dismissed.

" I wish that idle, mischievous boy would marry Bella, and settle down,"
said she.

" Yes," said I, and went on writing.

"Why, Mary, how ill you look!" she cried then. "Is anything the
matter ? "

I hate being told I look ill ; it only means that I look ugly : but I
answered cheerfully, " Nothing in the world ; " and she, being easily satisfied,
went off to another subject, which lasted till it was time for me to go away.
The post of secretary to Lady Harman was not altogether a bed of roses :
she has a wide range of interests, and a soft heart ; but her other faculties are
not quite in proportion. I was generally weary, by the time I reached home,
with the endeavour to reconcile her promises and her practice in the eyes of
the world — that most censorious of worlds, the philanthropic.

I repeated Gerald's words as I sat before the glass in my bedroom. '^ To
be sure, the face is enough," he had said.

My own face, pale, with no salient points to make it even impressively
ugly, gave me back the speech as I uttered it I have neither eyelashes, nor
distinction ; I do not look clever, or even amiable ; my figure is not worthy
of the name ; and my hands and feet are hopeless.

The concentrated bitterness of years swept over me ; I loved Gerald
Harman, as Bella Sturgis, with her perfect face, was incapable of loving ; but
my love was rendered grotesque by the accident of birth which had made me
an unattractive woman. Given beauty, or even the personal fascination, which
so often persuades one that it is beauty, I could have held my own against
the world, in spite of my poverty, my lack of friends, or of social position.
As things were, I saw myself condemned to a sordid monotony ; ever at a
disadvantage ; cheated of my youth, and of nearly all life's sweeter possi-
bilities. I was considered clever, by the Harmans, it is true ; but the world
in general, had it noticed me at all, would have refused to believe that such a
face as mine could harbour brains. Gerald, I knew, had proclaimed in the
family that Mary Gower had wits ; and looked on me as his own special
discovery: for though I had but a plain head on my shoulders, it was an
accurate thinking machine ; and could occasionally produce a phrase worthy
of his laughter.

I have a certain dreary sense of humour which prevents my being, as a

BEAUTY S HOUR 13

rule, quite overwhelmed by this aspect of my life ; but on the January after-
noon of which I write, I was fairly mastered by it ; and when Miss Whateley
came up to light the gas, which she generally did herself, she found me with
my head on the dressing-table, in an attitude of abject despair. Miss Whateley
was my landlady ; and had been my governess in better days.

" My dear," said she, " what 's the matter ? "

" Only my face," said I.

" Glycerine is the best thing," said she, and began pulling the curtains.

She knew perfectly well what I meant.

" Whatty," said I, musingly, " how different my life would be if I were a
pretty woman — though only for a few hours out of the twenty-four."

" Oh, yes," she answered. " Yet you might be glad sometimes when the
hours were over."

I only shook my head ; and fell to looking into my own ^yts again,
with the yearning, stronger than it had ever been before, rising like a passion
into my face.

Then something unforeseen happened : Miss Whateley, standing behind
me, saw it ; and I saw it myself as in a dream. My reflected face grew
blurred, and then faded out ; and from the mist there grew a new face, of
wonderful beauty ; the face of my desire. It looked at me from the glass,
and when I tried to speak, its lips moved too. Miss Whateley uttered a
sound that was hardly a cry, and caught me by the shoulder.

" Mary — Mary — " she said.

I got up then and faced her ; she was white as death, and her eyes
were almost vacant with terror.

^ What has happened ? " said I.

My voice was the same ; but when I glanced down at my body, I saw
that it also had undergone transformation. It struck me, in the midst of my
immense surprise, as being curious that I should not be afraid. No explana-
tion of the miracle offered itself to me ; none seemed necessary : an effort of
will had conquered the power of my material conditions, and I controlled
them ; my body fitted to my soul at last

" I'm going mad ! " cried poor Miss Whateley.

" We can't both be mad," said I. " Don't be afraid ; tell me what I look
like."

" You are perfectly beautiful," she gasped.

I b^an walking up and down the room : I was much taller, and my
dress hung clear of my ankles ; when I noticed that, I began to laugh.

14 THE SAVOY

" Whatty, I've grown," I cried out.

She sat down. " Do you feel strange ? " she asked.

" Just the same ; only a little larger for my clothes. What are we going
to do? Will it last?"

" I think you had better just sit down again, and wish yourself back."

" Never, never. If beautiful I can be, beautiful I will remain. Let us
put down the hour and the date."

I took up my diary, and made a great cross against the day; then
I noticed that the sun set at twenty-seven minutes past four ; it was now
twenty-five minutes to five.

" I wonder what we can do to prove to ourselves that we've not been
dreaming, if I go back again ? " I questioned.

"Let us first spend the evening as usual," answered Miss Whateley.
" I will tell Jane that you are out, and that a young lady is coming to supper
with me."

Jane was our one servant : her powers of observation were limited ; and
we did not think it would be difficult to deceive her. So the stranger, whose
appearance seemed to bereave her of even her usual small allowance of
sense, sat that night at Miss Whatele/s table ; at ten o'clock we slipped up to
my bedroom ; and when Jane's tread was heard in the room above, we
breathed freely.

" She 's gone to bed," said I. " Now we can brew tea, and keep ourselves
awake. We must not sleep ; that is imperative."

We did not sleep ; though to poor Miss Whateley, who had no sense of a
triumphant new personality to sustain her, the task must have been difficult

Then, suddenly, at the hour of sunrise, I felt a sensation as of being in
darkness, in thick cloud ; from which I emerged with my beauty fallen from
me like a garment.

We neither of us said anything. I was conscious only of a physical
craving for rest and sleep, which overpowered me : I think Miss Whateley
was struck dumb in the presence of a wonder she could not understand. We
kissed one another silently ; and I went to bed and slept for a couple of hours,
a dreamless sleep.

BEAUTVS HOUR 15

CHAPTER II

When I reached Lady Harman's that morning, I found the two girls, Clara
and Betty, alone in their mother's study.

Betty, with the face of a Romney, and the manners of an engaging child,
is wholly attractive : Clara is handsome too ; she rather affects a friendship
with me on intellectual grounds, which bores me : her theories are the terror
of my life, being always in direct opposition to my own, for which I have to
try and account

But on this particular morning she had nothing more momentous on her
mind than a dance, which her mother was giving the next evening.

" You must come to it," Betty cried. " It will be such fun talking it over
afterwards. Onlookers always see most of the game, you know."

" You are very kind, Betty," I said. They had long ago insisted that I
should call them by their Christian names. '' Has it ever struck you that
onlookers would sometimes like to be in the game, instead of outside it ? "

Betty looked a little confused.

" Well, somebody must look on," said she. " And it 's lucky when they
see how funny things are ; as you always do, Mary."

" Is there any particular game going on just now ? " I inquired. " Can I
be of any use?"

" There's Bella," said both girls.

I was very anxious to know the precise sum of Bella's iniquities. I
shoved away my papers with an entire lack of conscience ; and sat expectant.

" Of course Bella is very young," Clara began : she being about twenty-
one herself. " One mustn't judge her too hardly."

" Has she been doing anything you would not have done yourself?" I asked.

Betty looked at me, and raised her eyebrows. Clara was apt to pose as an
example to her younger sister.

" Well," said Clara, "//"I were engaged to some one as nice as Gerald, and
handsome, and well off, and all the rest of it, I don't think I'd encourage a little
wretch like Mr. Trench."

Clara's social ethics are of a wonderful simplicity.

" Because you'd think it wrong ? " I suggested.

" Well— so silly," said Clara.

** I think Bella has a perfect right to do as she likes," broke in Betty.

i6 THE SAVOY

" She 's not engaged to Gerald ; he hasn't proposed to her ; and he ought to, for
she 's awfully fond of him."

" I agree with you both," said I. " Miss Sturgis is silly, but not altogedier
to be blamed. Am I to observe her and Mr. Trench together, and report the
phases of the flirtation to you ? "

Yes : that was what they wanted.

" Do you seriously think I'm coming to your dance ? " I went oa ** Why,
I haven't got a dress, or a face fit to show in a ball-room ; and I've not been to
a ball for years."

They fought this statement inch by inch : they would lend me a dress ;
my face didn't matter ; and after all, I was only twenty-eight, not really old.
I ended the discussion by promising to go ; for an idea had flashed into my
mind, that made me dizzy.

Supposing the other, the beautiful Mary, renewed her existence s^^n that
evening, might she not enjoy a strange, a brief triumph? Would there not be a
perfect, though a secret pleasure in seeing the look in Gerald Harman's eyes,
in surprising the altered tones of his voice ? For beauty drew him like a
magnet.

I fell into such a deep silence over this thought, that Clara j^nd Betty grew
weary, and went away ; and I did not see them again till luncheon-time.

There were three visitors : the man who was in love with Betty, and the
man with whom Betty was in love ; the juxtaposition of the two always
delighted me : I don't believe they hated one another ; but each believing him-
self to be the favoured lover, had a fine scorn for the other's folly. The third
guest was Bella Sturgis.

Gerald sat at the end of the table, opposite his mother. As I have said,
the frost kept him from hunting, and he was disconsolate. With him, as with
many finely bred, finely tempered Englishmen, sport was a passion ; more,
a religion. He put into his hunting, his shooting, his cricket, all the ardour,
all the sincerity that are necessary to achievement : I respected this in him,
even while it moved me to a kind of pity ; for I felt instinctively that though
he might have skill and cours^e to overcome physical difliculties or danger, he
was totally unfitted to cope with the more subtile side of life ; and would be
helpless in the face of an emotional difliculty. On this day of which I write,
he was evidently suffering from some jar to the even tenour of his life ; of which
the continued frost was a merely superficial aggravation.

By his side sat Bella Sturgis : I looked at her with a more critical eye than
usual : she had a great air of languid distinction ; everything about her was

BEAUTY S HOUR 17

perfect ; from the pose of her head to the intonation of her voice. She very
rarely looked at me, and I don't think she had ever clearly realized who I was :
I felt sure Gerald had not imparted his discoveries to her with regard to my
wits. I never spoke at luncheon when she was there.

But to-day, the memory of that face in the glass the night before, made me
reckless and audacious.

" I've been constituted the girl's special reporter to-morrow night," said I
to Gerald. " I am to observe the faces, and the flirtations."

" Then you may constitute yourself my special reporter too," said he,
gloomily.

" It will be the next best thing to dancing," I went on.

"Why don't you dance?" Miss Sturgis asked, lifting her eyes, and
looking at me for an instant.

I confess I was a little surprised at the cleverness of her thrust

" Because nobody asks me," I said, with a smile.

My candour had no effect on her : she turned to Gerald with an air that
dismissed the whole subject. I noticed that he would hardly answer her ; and
I supposed that the breach between them had widened. So she addressed her-
self to the man with whom Betty was in love ; thereby throwing the table into
a state of suppressed agitation ; with the exception of Lady Harman, who
professed to notice none of the details of domestic life : she left such things to
the girls, or the servants ; and devoted herself to the care of people in Billings-
gate, or in the Tropics, who had need of her, she said. But she was really kind ;
and always had a joint for lunch, " because it was Mary's dinner ; " and though
I often yearned for the other more interesting dishes, I never dared to suggest
any deviation from beef and mutton : to-day it was mutton.

" Won't you have some more ? " said Lady Harman. " I can't help
thinking how much we waste. Some of my poor families would be so glad of
this, and here 's only Mary touches it."

" Oh, mother," said Betty, " your poor people are always starving ; and a leg
more or less wouldn't make much difference."

" What 's an arm or a leg, compared with a face ? " said the young man who
was in love with Betty, with his eyes fixed on her. His remark had no direct
bearing on the subject, which he had but half followed ; and it sent her into
a fit of suppressed laughter, with which Clara remonstrated in an under-
tone.

" I don't care," said the rebellious Betty. " It 's Gerald's house, and as
long as he doesn't mind my giggling, I shall giggle."

i8 THE SAVOY

** I mind nothing/' said the master of the house. His mood was obviously
overcast. I saw Bellk throw a look at him out of her deep eyes ; the eyes of
a woman who has always lived under emotional conditions. I began to realize
dimly what such conditions might be like.

He got up, and pushed his chair from the table.

" Will you excuse me," said he. "I have an engagement"

" Do go/' said Lady Harman, "^ you are always late, Gerald. I'm sure you
ought to go at once."

Bella held out her hand to him.

" It 's au revotry not good-bye," said he, and did not take it

That evening my transformation took place again ; under the same con-
ditions of ardent desire on my part.

" To-morrow," said I to Miss Whateley, " I shall go to the Harman's ball
in the character of Mary Hatherley" Hatherley had been my mother's maiden
name.

"But you have no dress," said Miss Whateley. ''And how can you
account for yourself?"

" I must do it/' I cried. " You must think of some plan."

" Let us go," said she, " to Dr. Trefusis."

CHAPTER III

Dr. Trefusis was the only man who had ever loved me. He was my
father's great friend ; but I feel sure he must once have been in love with my
mother ; at least, I can only account for his great affection for myself, on some
such sentimental hypothesis. When my father died, four years ago, and I
was involved in money difficulties, it was Dr. Trefusis who took me in, and
eventually got me my secretaryship with Lady Harman. He wanted me to
share his home ; but this I refused to do ; believing that his affection for me
would not stand the test of losing his liberty, and his solitude.

When we reached his house, he was out ; and we waited some time in the

library.

'' He won't believe us/' Miss Whateley kept saying ; and this seemed so
likely, that I was shivering with nervousness when he at last came in.

" You won't believe it," said Miss Whateley, " but this is Mary Gower."

BEAUTY S HOUR 19

He looked very blank ; but recovering his presence of mind, turned to me

and

" A cousin, I presume, of my old friend, Mary Gower ? "

" Oh, Dr. Trefusis," cried I, '' we have come to you with the most extra-
ordinary story : don't )ron know my voice ? Xam Mary ; but I have got into
another body."

" The voice is Mary's," said he, in the tone of one balancing evidence.

Then Miss Whateley began telling him what had happened : while I sat
in silence, watching the mixture of wonder and scepticism on his face. I
noticed also another look, when his eyes met mine, a look that was almost
devout — he had always been a worshipper of beauty.

When the story was done, he began asking questions : my answers seemed
unsatisfactory : we sat at last without speaking, while he looked at me, and
drummed on the table.

" You are very plausible people," he said, at length ; " but you can't expect
me to believe all this ; though I'm at a loss to imagine why you should take
the trouble to play such a practical joke on a poor old fellow like myself.
Still, I'll not be ungracious, and grumble ; for it has given me a great deal of
pleasure to see anything so charming in this dull place;"

He got up, as though he wished to end the interview.

I was in despair : his determination not to recognize me struck like a
blow at my sense of identity : then the thought came : could I, by a supreme
effort of will, induce a transformation under his very eyes ?

I held out my right hand — long and beautiful ; with delicate fingers, that
yet were full of nervous strength.

•That," said I, "is not the hand of Mary Gower." He shrugged his
shoulders.

" It is not," said he.

" Look at it," I cried.

Then came an awful moment during which I concentrated my whole will
in a passion of energy ; the room went black ; I was dimly conscious that Dr.
Trefusis had fallen on his knees by the table ; and was watching the hand I
held under the lamp, with suspended breath : for it had begun to change ;
some subtile difference passed over it, like a cloud over the face of the sun :
its beauty of line and colour faded ; the long fingers shrunk, and widened ; the
blue-veined whiteness darkened into a coarser tint ; the fine nails lost their
shape, and grew ugly, stunted, and opaque.

Dr. Trefusis spoke no word : I felt his fingers were ice-cold as he turned

6

20 THE SAVOY

up my sleeve, and noted how the coarsened wrist grew into the perfect arm ;
he held my hand, and swung it to and fro ; then he left the room abruptly,
saying " don't move."

I sat still at the table : Miss Whateley came and stood by me.

" Mary," she said, " it must be wrong ; it is playing with some terrible
power you don't understand."

" Probably we've all got it," I answered dreamily. " It is perhaps a spark
of the creative force — but Dr. Trefusis and all his science won't be able to
explain it."

Then the doctor came back, with instruments, and microscopes, and I
know not what, and began to examine the miracle. At last he looked
up at me.

" I can make nothing of it," said he. " But it is the hand of Mary Gower.
That is beyond dispute. Now let it go back."

He held it in his own : this time the change was quicker ; and he dropped
it with a shudder.

" Now do you believe me ? " I asked.

He answered, '' yes ; " and sat lost in thought

" You had better go home now," he said presently. " I must think over
all this ; there must be some hypothesis — miracles don't happen — ^you must let
me see you every day."

I never have understood, and never shall understand, the scientific theories
which he had first built up, in order to account for what had happened to me.
I was grateful for the curiosity and interest that my case roused in him,
because they led him to help me in practical ways ; but any attempt at
a scientific explanation of the mystery struck me as being irrelevant, and not
particularly interesting. This attitude on my part at once amused, and
irritated him ; he gave up trying to make me understand the meaning of his
investigations ; and of the experiments which he made me try ; for it was not
till later, that he came to look upon the matter as beyond any scientific solu-
tion ; and only to be accounted for on grounds which he would at first have
rejected with scorn.

I pass these things over ; because I could not write of them intelligibly,
and I might be doing Dr. Trefusis some injustice by an imperfect exposition.

On this occasion, I burst in suddenly, and scattered his reflections by
declaring that I must go to the Harman's ball the next night, in my new
character.

The idea seemed to divert him.

BEAUTY S HOUR 21

" Ha ! " said he. " Mary Gower wants to taste the sweets of success,
does she ! Upon my soul, it would be worth seeing you, my dear. But
it would be difficult to account for the sudden rising of such a star."

'' Not if you took me, and chaperoned, and uncled me," I said.

He took a turn or two in the room.

" Why not ? " he said then, with a laugh.

" Oh, Dr. Trefusis, would you really ! " I cried out, and seized him by
both hands.

He held them and looked at me oddly ; he is a man of nearly sixty, and
my old friend ; so I could not be angry when he bent down and kissed me.

" I would do anything for a pretty woman," said he.

I felt a sudden pang : this was the first tribute offered to my beauty,
and it hurt Was Mary Gower beginning already to be jealous of Mary
Hatherley ?

We settled the matter, with jests and laughter. Dr. Trefusis has the
spirit of a child, and the capacity for making abrupt transitions from the
serious to the absurd ; and he now entered into the plot as though it were
a game ; as though nothing had happened to unnerve and startle him but
a short time before. I was to be his niece, a niece from the country ; if further
inquiries were made, and my non-appearance during the day had to be
accounted for, I was to be a devoted art student ; an eccentric ; who gave her
days to painting, and her evenings to pleasure. Miss Whatele/s faint
objections were soon silenced : we parted with a promise to meet the next
morning; when the Harman household would be upset and I should not
be wanted ; to choose a ball dress.

" Not that that face of yours needs any artificial setting," were his last
words.

"I only hope you won't repent all this," were Miss Whateley's, as
we went up to bed.

CHAPTER IV

My father had taken me, as a young girl, to balls : I had sat out unnoticed,
but observant ; and it had seemed to me that, under apparently artificial con-
ditions, women grouped themselves into three distinct types ; which were
almost primitive in their lack of complexity. The beauty ; the woman
whose claims to beauty are not universally acknowledged ; and the plain
woman.

22 THE SAVOY

The beauty alwajrs pleased me the most: she was unconscious; using her
divine right of sovereignty with a carelessness only possible to one bom in the
purple ; experience had bred in her a certainty of pleasing that made her
indifferent to the effect she produced ; which indifference made her the more
effective. That she had her secret moments of scorn, I never doubted ; a scorn
of that lust of the eye which held her beauty too dear ; and I wondered
whether any such woman had ever felt tempted in some moment of outraged
emotion, to curse the loveliness that men loved, careless of the heart, or head.

The woman with disputable claims annoyed me : she seemed to me like
a queen dependent on the humour of the mob, from whose brows the uneasy
crown might be torn, and trampled under foot; and then replaced at a caprice.
She was uncertain of herself ; too much affected by the opinions of others to be
easy or unconscious. I was sorry for her too; I felt sure that she often married
the man who thought her beautiful, out of gratitude ; for she was always
unduly grateful ; her attitude towards the world being one of mingled
depreciation and assertion.

As for the plain woman, had I not stood hand in hand with her outside
the gates of Paradise all my life, the angel with the two-edged sword looking
on us, with eyes that held both pity and satire I Oh, kind angel — stand aside,
and let us look through the bars, and see gracious figures going to and fro ;
and listen to strange music, and to the sound of voices moved by a keen,
sweet passion. We look ; we fall back ; and know the angel by his several
names: Fate: Injustice: Mercy.

I had always recognized the subtile emotional intoxicant that is distilled
from the atmosphere of a ball-room. It seemed to come in great waves about
me, as I walked up the Harman's ball-room, followed by Dr. Trefusis,

He had written for permission to bring his niece, and they were prepared
to see me. No, I am wrong ; they were not prepared. Lady Harman was
visibly taken aback ; and Clara and Betty had something deferential in their
manner, which showed a desire to be unusually pleasing. Then Gerald came
forward. His ^yt,s met mine, with the look of one who sees something he has
kmg sought, and despaired of finding.

^ Can you spare me a dance — " he asked, pausing at the name.

" My name is Hatherley," said I.

My voice struck him ; he glanced at me with a puzzled expression, and
hesitated — for a moment.

'^ I must have more than one," he said.

BEAUTY S HOUR 23

That was so like Gerald, I nearly laughed.

" The page is blank, you see," I answered.

He took advantage of my remark, and wrote his name several times in
my programme. I have the programme still.

Dancing had b^un again : a crowd had emerged from the stairs
and the anterooms. A number of men were introduced to me ; some of
whom I had already seen at the house. The first with whom I danced was a
Colonel Weston ; I knew him, on Betty's authority, to be a beautiful dancer,
but he was a head shorter than I, and I smiled involuntarily when he said,
" Shall we dance ? "

He caught my smile.

" Why are you so divinely tall, O daughter of the gods ? " said he.
" And from what Olympian height have you descended this evening ? Why
have I never met you before ? "

" I will answer no questions," said I, " till we have danced. My feet ache
to begiru"

*• Then they don't dance on Olympus ? "

** The gods must come among the mortals to make merry," I said.

" For which thing let us be thankful," he answered. Then we moved
away : I had been hitherto a bad dancer, but to-night I felt a spirit in my
feet ; and realized, for the first time, the mysterious joy of perfect motion. As
we paused near the door, I saw Bella Sturgis coming slowly up the stairs.
She did not take her e,yts off me ; I saw her question the man on whose arm
she was leaning ; but he looked at me, without answering. It was a revelation,
that look in their eyes ; I saw it repeated, in other faces, over and over again,
as I walked slowly across the ball-room after the dance was over.

The next was with Gerald : my pulses beat thickly, and I was hardly
conscious of the outside world, till we stopped dancing, and he led me into a
little room, which I did not at the moment recognize as Lady Harman's study.

** And so I have met you at last," he said ; and I asked him what he
meant

" Yours is the face I have been looking for all my life," he answered.

There was a strange simplicity in his voice, and words ; as though he spoke
on an impulse that overruled all conventions, all fear of offence.

'* But what of the woman behind the face ? " I questioned.

" Can I ever hope to know her ? "

" If you know her, you will be disappointed : she is like any other
woman."

24 THE SAVOY

He shook his head.

" I don't believe it Tell me what she is really like."

I looked round vaguely, my thoughts intent on what I should say to him :
then I suddenly noticed the pictures on the walls, and remembered that this
was the room in which Mary Gower sat every day.

" She is not without heart, and she has a head that can think," said I.

" That is not like every other woman."

" Would you credit her with either, if she had another face ? " I asked him.

Something in my voice struck him, for the second time ; he looked at
me, with a quickened attention.

" The face is an indication of the soul, surely," he answered.

" That is a lie," said I. " A lie invented to cover the injustice done alike
to the beautiful woman, and the woman who is not beautiful."

" Injustice ? " he echoed.

" The thing is so simple," said I, with a bitterness I could not hide.
" You place beauty on a pedestal ; her face is an index to her soul, you say :
what happens if you find she does not possess the soul, which she never claimed
to have, but which you insisted on crediting her with? You dethrone her
with ignominy. The case of the other woman is as hard : she has a face that
does not attract you, so you deny her the soul that you forced on the other
one. She goes through life, branded ; not by individuals, I allow, but by
public opinion. The vox populi is the voice of nature, 'tis true ; but nature is
very hard, very ruthless."

I stopped : Gerald sat looking at me, with a rapt gaze, but I saw he had
not listened to a word I said. The Hungarian band had b^^un playing again
in the ball-room. As I listened, and watched the phantastic whirl of the dancers
through the open door, they seemed to me to symbolize the burden of all the
ages : desire and satiety ; illusion and reality ; dancing hand in hand, to a
music wild and tender as love ; sad and stem as life : partners that look ever
in one another's eyes, and dance on, in despite of what they see.

" Let us go and dance too," said Gerald.

I have no very clear recollection of the rest of that evening : there was
unreality in the air, and a glamour, and an aching pain. Men and women said
gracious things to me ; yet seemed to watch me with cruel faces ; I was only
conscious, at the last, of an imperative desire to fly, to hide myself, to escape
even from Gerald's presence ; and to be alone.

O. Shakespear.
( To be continued^

26 THE SAVOY

philosophy pagans, no matter by what name they knew themselves ; because
the pagans, as he understood the word pagan, believed more in the outward
life, and in what he called " war, princedom, and victory," than in the secret
life of the spirit: and the followers of the second philosophy Christians,
because only those whose sympathies had been enlarged and instructed by
art and poetry could obey the Christian command of unlimited forgiveness.
Blake had already found this " pagan " philosophy in Swedenborg, in Milton,
in Wordsworth, in Sir Joshua Reynolds, in many persons^ and it had
roused him so constantly and to such angry paradox, that its overthrow
became the sig^nal passion of his life, and filled all he did and thought
with the excitement of a supreme issue. Its kingdom was bound to grow
weaker so soon as life began to lose a little in crude passion and naive
tumult; but Blake was the first to announce its successor, and he did
thiB, as must needs be with revolutionists who also have ^the law" for
" mother," with so firm a conviction that the things his opponents held white
were indeed black, and the things they held black indeed white ; with so stroi^
a persuasion that all busy with government are men of darkness and ^ •ome-
thing other than human life " ; with such a fluctuating fire of stormy paradox,
that his phrases seem at times to foreshadow those French mystics who have
taken upon their shoulders the overcoming of all existing tilings, and say
their prayers '' to Lucifer, son of the morning, derided of priests and of kings."
The kingdom that was passing was, he held, the kingdom of the Tree of
Knowledge ; the kingdom that was coming was the kingdom of the Tree of
Life : men who ate from the Tree of Knowledge wasted their days in anger
against one another, and in taking one another captive in great nets ; men
who sought their food among the green leaves of the Tree of Life condemned
none but the unimaginative and the idle, and those who foi^et that even
love and death and old age are an imaginative art.

In these opposing kingdoms is the explanation of the petulant sayings he
wrote on the margins of the great sketch-book, and of those others, still more
petulant, which Crabb Robinson has treasured in his diary. The sayings about
the forgiveness of sins have no need of further explanation, and are in contrast
with the attitude of that excellent commentator, Herr Hettinger, who, though
Dante swooned from pity at the tale of Francesca, will only '^ sympathize" with
her " to a certain extent," being taken in a theological net "It seems as if
Dante," Blake wrote, '' supposes God was something superior to the Father of
Jesus ; for if he gives rain to the evil and the good, and his sun to the just and
the unjust, he can never have builded Dante's Hell, nor the Hell of the Bible,

BLAKE'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 29

as our parsons explain it It must have been framed by the dark spirit itself,
and 50 I understand it." And again, " Whatever task is of vengeance and
whatever is against forgiveness of sin is not of the Father but of Satan, the
accuser, the father of Hell." And again, and this time to Crabb Robinson,
" Dante saw devils where 1 saw none. I see good only," " I have never
known a very bad man who had not something very good about him."
This forgiveness was not the forgiveness of the theologian who has received a
commandment from afar off"; but of the mystical artist- legislator who believes
he has been taught, in a mystical vision, that " the imagination is the man him-
self," and believes he has discovered in the practice of his art, that without a
perfect sympathy there is no perfect imagination, and therefore no perfect life.
At another moment he called Dante, "an atheist, a mere politician busied
about this world, as Milton was, till, in his old age, he returned to God whom
he had had in his childhood." " Everything is atlieism," he had already
explained, " which assumes the reality of the natural and unspiritual world."
Dante, he held, assumed its reality when he made obedience to its laws
the condition of man's happiness hereafter, and he set Swedenborg beside
Dante in misbelief for calling Nature, " the ultimate of Heaven," a lowest rung,
as it were, of Jacob's ladder, instead of a net woven by Satan to entangle
our wandering joys and bring our hearts into captivity. There are certain
curious unfinished diagrams scattered here and there among the now separated
pages of the sketch-book, and of these there is one which, had it had all its
concentric rings filled with names, would have been a systematic exposition of
his animosities, and of their various intensity. It represents Paradise, and in
the midst, where Dante emerges from the earthly Paradise, is written,
" Homer," and in the next circle, " Swedenborg," and on the margin these
words : " Everything in Dante's Paradise shows that he has made the earth the
foundation of all, and its goddess Nature, memory," memory of sensation, " not
the Holy Ghost. . . . Round Purgatory is Paradise, and round Paradise
vacuum. Homer is the centre of all, 1 mean the poetry of the heathen." The
statement that round Paradise is vacuum is a proof of the persistence of his
ideas and of bis curiously literal understanding of his own symbols ; for
it is but another form of the charge made against Milton many years
before in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." "In Milton the Father is
destiny, the son a ratio of the five senses," Blake's definition of the reason
which is the enemy of the imagination, "and the Holy Ghost vacuum."'
Dante, like the Kabalists, symbolized the highest order of created beings by
the fixed stars, and God by the darkness beyond them, the Pnmum Mobile,

30 THE SAVOY

Blake, absorbed in his very diflferent vision, in which God took always a human
shape, believed that to think of God under a symbol drawn from the outer
world was in itself idolatry ; but that to imagine Him as an unpeopled im-
mensity was to think of Him under the one symbol furthest from His essence;
it being a creation of the ruining reason, "generalizing" away "the minute

* particulars of life." Instead of seeking God in the deserts of time and space, in
exterior immensities, in what he called " the abstract void," he believed that the
further he dropped behind him memory of time and space, reason builded
upon sensation, morality founded for the ordering of the world ; and the more
he was absorbed in emotion ; and, above all, in emotion escaped from the impulse

. of bodily longing and the restraints of bodily reason, in artistic emotion ; the
nearer did he come to Eden's " breathing garden," to use his beautiful phrase,
and to the unveiled face of God. No worthy symbol of God existed but the
inner world, the true humanity, to whose various aspects he gave many names,
" Jerusalem," " Liberty," " Eden," " The Divine Vision," " The Body of God,"
" The Human Form Divine," " The Divine Members," and whose most intimate
expression was Art and Poetry. He always sang of God under this symbol :

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God Our Father dear ;
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is man. His child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart ;

Pity a human face ;
And Love, the human form divine.

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime.

That prays in his distress.
Prays to the human form divine —

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

Whenever he gave this symbol a habitation in space he set it in the sun, the
father of light and life ; and set in the darkness beyond the stars, where light
and life die away, Og and Anak and the giants that were of old, and the
iron throne of Satan.

By thus contrasting Blake and Dante by the light of Blake's paradoxical
wisdom, and as though there was no great truth hung from Dante's beam of
the balance, I but seek to interpret a little-understood philosophy rather
than one incorporate in the thought and habits of Christendom. Every
philosophy has half its truth from times and generations ; and to us one half

J

BLARES ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 33

of the philosophy of Dante is less living than his poetry : while the truth
Blake preached, and sang, and painted, is the root of the cultivated life, of the
fragile perfect blossom of the world born in ages of leisure and peace, and
never yet to last more than a little season ; the life those Phaeacians — who told
Odysseus that they had set their hearts in nothing but in "the dance, and
changes of raiment, and love and sleep" — lived before Poseidon heaped a
mountain above them ; the lives of all who, having eaten of the tree of life,
love, more than the barbarous ages when none had time to live, " the minute
particulars of life," the tittle fragments of space and time, which are wholly
flooded by beautiful emotion because they are so little they are hardly of
time and space at all. " Every space smaller than a globule of man's blood,"
he wrote, "opens into eternity of which this vegetable earth is but a shadow."
And again, " Every time less than a pulsation of the artery is equal in its
tenor and value to six thousand years, for in this period the poet's work is
done, and all the great events of time start forth, and are conceived ; in such a
period, within a moment, a pulsation of the artery." Dante, indeed, taught,
in the " Pui^atorio," that sin and virtue are alike from love, and that love is
from God ; but this love he would restrain by a complex externa! law, a
complex external Church. Blake, upon the other hand, cried scorn upon the
whole spectacle of external things, a vision to pass away in a moment, and
preachetf the cultivated life, the internal Church which has no laws but beauty,
rapture, and labour. " I know of no other Christianity, and of no other
gospel, than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts
of imagination, the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is
but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our eternal or imaginative
bodies when these vegetable mortal bodies are no more. The Apostles knew
of no other gospel. What are all their spiritual gifts ? What is the divine
spirit ? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an intellectual fountain ? What is
the harvest of the gospel and its labours ? What is the talent which it is a curse
to hide ? What are the treasures of heaven which we are to lay up for our-
selves ? Are they any other than mental studies and performances ? What
are all the gifts of the gospel, are they not all mental gifts? Is God a spirit
who must be worshipped in spirit and truth ? And are not the gifts of the
spirit everything to man ? O ye religious ! discountenance every one among
you who shall pretend to despise art and science. I call upon you in the
name of Jesus ! What is the life of man but art and science? Is it meat
and drink ? Is not the body more than raiment ? What is mortality but the
things relating to the body which dies ? What is immortality but the things

34 THE SAVOY

relating to the spirit which lives eternally ? What is the joy of Heaven but
improvement in the things of the spirit ? What are the pains of Hell but
ignorance, idleness, bodily lust, and the devastation of the things ef the
spirit ? Answer this for yourselves, and expel from among you those who
pretend to despise the labours of art and science, which alone are the labours
of the gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought ? Can you think
at all, and not pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build
Jerusalem, and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders ?
And remember, he who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it
pride, and selfishness, and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift,
which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrites as sins. But that
which is sin in the sight of cruel man is not sin in the sight of our kind God.
Let every Christian as much as in him lies engage himself openly and publicly
before all the world in some mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem." I
have given the whole of this long passage, because, though the very keystone
of his thought, it is little known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most
profound thoughts, in the mysterious prophetic books. Obscure about much
else, they are always lucid on this one point, and return to it again and
again. " I care not whether a man is good or bad," are the words they put
into the mouth of God, " all that I care is whether he is a wise man or a fool.
Go put off holiness and put on intellect." This cultivated life, which seems to us
so artificial a thing, is really, according to them, the laborious re-discovery of
the golden age, of the primeval simplicity, of the simple world in which Christ
taught and lived, and its lawlessness is the lawlessness of Him '' who being
all virtue acted from impulse, and not from rules,"

And his seventy disciples sent
Against religion and government.

The historical Christ was indeed no more than the supreme symbol of the
artistic imagination, in which, with every passion wrought to perfect beauty by
art and poetry, we shall live, when the body has passed away for the last time ;
but before that hour man must labour through many lives and many deaths.
"Men are admitted into heaven, not because they have curbed and governed their
passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures
of heaven are not ligations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which the
passions emanate, uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not entqr
into heaven, let him be ever so holy. Holiness is not the price of entering
into heaven. Those who are cast out are all those who, having no passions of

r

»

I

BLAKE'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 37

their own, because no intellect, have spent their lives in curbing and governing
other people's by the various arts of poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The
modem Church crucifies Christ with the head downwards. Woe, woe, woe to
you hypocrites." After a time man has " to return to the dark valley whence
he came and begin his labours anew," but before that return he dwells in the free-
dom of imagination, in the peace of " the divine image," " the divine vision," in
the peace that passes understanding, and is the peace of art. " I have been very
near the gates of death," Blake wrote in his last letter, " and have returned very
weak and an old man, feeble and tottering, but not in spirit and life, not in the
real man, the imagination, which liveth for ever. In that I grow stronger and
stronger as this foolish body decays . . . Flaxman is gone and we must all soon
follow, everyone to his eternal home, leaving the delusions of goddess Nature
and her laws, to get into freedom from all the laws of the numbers," the multi-
plicity of nature, " into the mind in which everyone is king and priest in his own
house." The phrase about the king and priest is a memory of the crown and
mitre set upon Dante's head before he entered Paradise. Our imaginations are
but fr^ments of the universal imagination, portions of the universal body of
God.andasweenlargcourimaginationbyimaginativesympathy, and transform,
with the beauty and the peace of art, the sorrows and Joys of the world, we put
off the limited mortal man more and more, and put on the unlimited " immortal
man." " As the seed waits eagerly watching for its flower and fruit, anxious its
little soul looks out into the clear expanse to see if hungry winds are abroad with
their invisible array ; so man looks out in tree, and herb, and fish, and bird,
and beast, collecting up the fragments of his immortal body into the elemental
forms of everything that grows. ... In pain he sighs, in pain he labours in
his universe, sorrowing in birds over the deep, or howling in the wolf over the
slain, and moaning in the cattle, and in the winds." Mere sympathy for all
living things is not enough, because we must learn to separate their " infected "
from their eternal, their satanic from their divine part ; and this can only be
done by desiring always beauty ; the one mask through which can be seen the
unveiled eyes of eternity. We must then be artists in all things, and under-
stand that love and old age and death are first among the arts. In this sense,
he insists that " Christ's apostles were artists," that " Christianity is Art," and
that " the whole business of man is the arts." Dante, who deified law, selected
its antagonist, passion, as the most important of sins, and made the regions where
it was punished the largest. Blake, who deified imaginative freedom, held
" corporeal reason " for the most accursed of things, because it makes the
imagination revolt from the sovereignty of beautyand pass under the sovereignty

38 THE SAVOY

of corporeal law, and this is " the captivity in Egypt" True art is expressive
and symbolic, and makes every form, every sound, every colour, every gesture,
a signature of some unanalyzable, imaginative essence. False art is not expres-
sive but mimetic, not from experience, but from observation ; a-nd is the
mother of all evil, persuading us to save our bodies alive at no matter what
cost of rapine and fraud. True art is the flame of the last day, which begins
for every man, when he is first moved by beauty, and which seeks to bum
all things until they " become infinite and holy."

Blake's distaste for Dante's philosophy did not make him a less
sympathetic illustrator, any more than did his distaste for the philosophy
of Milton mar the beauty of his illustrations to " Paradise Lost" The illus-
trations which accompany the present article are, I think, among the finest
he ever did, and are certainly faithful to the text of " The Divine Comedy."
That of Dante talking with Uberti, and that of Dante in the circle of the
thieves, are notable for the flames which, as always in Blake, live with a
more vehement life than any mere mortal thing : fire was to him no unruly
oflspring of human hearths, but the Kabalistic element, one fourth of creation,
flowing and leaping from world to world, from hell to hell, from heaven to
heaven ; no accidental existence, but the only fit signature, because the only
pure substance, for the consuming breath of God. In the man, about to
become a serpent, and in the serpent, about to become a man, in the second
design, he has created, I think, very curious and accurate symbols of an
evil that . is not violent, but is subtle, finished, plausible. The sea and
clouded sun in the drawing of Dante and Virgil climbing among the rough
rocks at the foot of the Purgatorial mountain, and the night sea and spare
vegetation in the drawing of the sleep of Virgil, Dante and Statius near to
its summit, are symbols of divine acceptance, and foreshadow the land-
scapes of his disciples Calvert, Palmer, and Linnell, famous interpreters of
peace.

The faint unfinished figures in the globe of light in the drawing of
the sleepers are the Leah and Rachel of Dante's dream, the active and
the contemplative life of the spirit, the one gathering flowers, the other
gazing at her face in the glass. It is curious that Blake has made no
attempt, in these drawings, to make Dante resemble any of his portraits,
especially as he had, years before, painted Dante in a series of por-
traits of poets, of which many certainly tried to be accurate portraits. I
have not yet seen this picture, but if it has Dante's face, it will convince
me that he intended to draw, in the present case, the soul rather than the

BLAKE'S ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 41

body of Dante, and read "The Divine Comedy" as a vision seen not in the
body but out of the body. Both the f^res of Dante and Vii^I have the
slightly feminine look which he gave to representations of the souL

W. B. Yeats.

'VENITE, DESCENDAMUS "

£T be at last : give over words and sighing,
Vainly were all things said :
Better, at last, to find a place for lying,
Only dead.

I Silence were best, with songs and sighing over ;
Now be the music mute :
Now let the dead, red leaves of autumn cover
A vain lute !

Silence is best : for ever and for ever,

We will go down to sleep,
Somewhere, beyond her ken, where she need never
Come to weep.

Let be at last : colder she grows, and colder ;

Sleep and the night were best ;
Lying, at last, where we cannot behold her,
We may rest.

Ernest Dowson.

A Frontispiece to

Balzac's " La Fille aux Ycux d*Or "

A Wood Engraving after an unpublished Crayon Drawing

by

Charles Conder

TWO FOOLISH HEARTS

A SCENE OF RUSTIC LIFE

ijlUMMER had passed, the harvest was ingathered, and the
days began to close in.

At the Hiil Farm was heard the euphonious boom of
the threshing machine. It was music to many in the
neighbourhood, but to none more than to the little boy
Reggie.

He had become a fixture, so to speak, at the Farm. Since the day when
he crept through the hole in the orchard hedge, he had grown to be one of the
family. Everybody liked the boy: two on the farm — Letty and Clem —
had come to love him.

There is so much to love in a child — his smile, his general prettiness, his
bright and often saucy tongue, his way of looking at things, his mode of doing
them, and his highly ingenious plan of obtaining his desires. These are some
of the arts and charms of child life, and they win, yes, they win — often against
the adult's better Judgment.

Letty had grown to love the boy as her own. If he had not made
his appearance on the Farm just after breakfast, she would go out first into the
Croft and then into the Pond Close and call " Reg — gie, Reg — gie," in the
same cooing sort of way as she used to call Clem in his childhood ; and if the
little fellow was within earshot, he would gallop to her and spring into her
open arms with a warbling laugh which did the heart good to hear.

He was the revived sweets of old days to Letty ; a new bit of colouring
on her picture. He was more than this to her sometimes — he was Luce in
knickerbockers.

She did not like that fancy so well, though her feeling against Luce was
softening through contact with her child. She had not seen Luce, however.
Though Reggie had been a daily visitor to the farm since the end of June, and
it was now the end of September, the red-haired flame of Clem had not once
put in an appearance.

46 THE SAVOY

Her Rubens-like beauty had blushed unseen by Letty. She bestowed it
chiefly upon her mother in their little cottage in Radbrooke Bottom ; it
was only at times — in the silent and long summer nights when few people
were visible — that she went more than a stone's throw from her home.

The shorter days drew her out more. It was natural that it should
be so, though eminently displeasing that so fair a flower should perforce
have to exist under a cloud. This angered Clem. Luce at Radbrooke,
indoors, and away from him and the farm, was no better than Luce at
Brookington.

Many girls, similarly situated to Luce, would have "brazened it out"
Luce might, perhaps, have felt less the necessity of hiding herself away from
everybody, had she not heard the opinion entertained of her by Letty Martin.
She had heard that — and it was sufficient for her to almost nail herself to the
table leg in her mother's kitchen.

But now that the days began to be chary of their light towards six o'clock
in the evening. Luce began to be a little more prodigal of her presence. Three
years ago, or rather more, she used to court the sunlight ; now she haunted the
shades. To a really pure girl the knowledge of having committed an offence
against society, if not against Nature, is all that is needed to bring the blush to
the cheek at every awkward or trivial meeting. Luce, though a mother, had
by no means lost her purity. In the evening dusk she could blush without
detection.

So she sauntered down the garden path on this warm and calm evening
at the end of September ; on the evening of the annual village wake.

" You baint goin* to the wake, be ye, Luce, lass ? " said her mother as
she stepped out

" I should like to go, mother, for sake of the dancin* ; but I donna think
I will."

" If I was thee, my gel, I should'na. Theer'U be all the village theer,
besides Brookington folk ; an' summat 'ull be sure to be said 'bout thee. An*
as for dancin', Luce — well, you might nor be short o* partners, my gel ; but I
should'na — no, I should'na."

" I'll walk i' the lane a bit, mother," replied Luce, slowly. " If Reg cries,
I'll come in."

" Donna thee fret about little waxwork, deary ; I'll see to 'im."

When Luce was out of hearing, Mrs. Cowland wiped a tear out of the
comer of her eye, and sighed to herself: "The beautifulest peaches be the
fust to goo spect Poor Luce, beautiful Luce ! To think as I should hev 'ad

TWO FOOLISH HEARTS 47

such a beauty, the envy of all the mothers i' Radbrooke, an* then for she
to hev come to this. It breaks me heart when I think on't."

True, honest, motherly instinct is not so common that one can afford to
smile at the simple sentiments of Mrs. Cowland. They are rare in humble
spheres, far rarer in higher circles. The lowliest flowers are the tenderest, the
sweetest, the truest, the purest.

Meanwhile, with a full heart, and a set of confusing thoughts, which
seemed bom only to be killed, Luce sauntered along the lane.

There were no dwellings eastward beyond Luce's cottage. There was a
pond, called " The Green Pond " by the children, on account of its entire
surface being covered with a thin green film, on the north side, dangerously
near the footpath, and left open for any luckless child to fall into ; there was
also a curve in the lane northward ; but no more domiciles.

Beyond Luce's cottage the lane was a pure lane : hedges each side, com-
posed of hawthorn, blackthorn, buckthorn, blackberry, bramble, and elder ;
with, at intervals, a tall elm, ash, or oak, whose spreading branches almost
shut out the sky. from above, and made the lane shady even in the strongest
light

It was a pure lane — a leafy lover's lane.

To-night it wore an intensely delightful aspect It was moonlit Few
trees grew at the west end, and when the moon reached a certain altitude it
shot a ray of effulgence down that avenue-like Warwickshire lane like a light
in a railway tunnel. Luce looked like an animated poppy walking through
the light into darkness, for the moonrays did not penetrate to the lane's end.

Luce had no intention of going to the wake. There were reasons why
she should not Yet she had implanted in her the natural rustic longing to
attend the annual festivity on the green waste near the church.

The wake was a great occasion at Radbrooke : a loved occasion, a merry
occasion, and an occasion looked forward to for weeks beforehand. It was the
one time of the year when all the villagers and the occupants of the surround-
ing farms met together for a day's junketting and pleasantry. There were
shows, merry-go-rounds, shooting galleries, cocoa-nut throwing, and, to crown
all, dancing on the green to the often discordant music of the Brookington
band.

These pleasures are rustic, Bohemian if you will ; but they are the natural
pleasures of Strephon and Phyllis, and they attract — yes, they attract They
are the sole amusements of the peasant, isolated in his own greenwood ; and
though the gaily-painted caravan and roundabout are incongruous ex-

48 THE SAVOY

<:rescences upon the landscape, their coming is an exciting event in the life of
the villager.

The roadway or street of the village ran parallel with Radbrooke Bottom,
and at its eastward end it sloped southward so decidedly that the lane and the
street at that end were not more than twenty yards apart. As Luce stood at
the junction the sounds of the blaring music of the roundabouts floated to her
ear, mingled with the peals of laughter and the shouts of merry-makers.

She was but a young thing, full of life, and with a taste for enjoyment
She did not intend to take part in the wake, but the alluring sounds of the
pleasures provided there drew her feet round the bend of the road to a point
where it joined the village street, and commanded a fine view of the motley
fair.

What a sight it was, just on the outskirts of silence !

To the contemplative being who stood where Luce was standing, the
contrast between the two scenes would have seemed extraordinary, not to say
terrible. Two distinct worlds, they were separated from each other only by a
few yards. Luce was standing in a silent world, which gave forth no sound ;
the world before her blazed with light, colour, and movement, and dinned the
ears with its noise.

And above the flaming oil-lamps, the madly-circling roundabouts, the
wildly dancing people, who seemed never to tire through dance after dance,
above the shouts of the showmen, the scream of the steam-whistle, the laugh
of the light-hearted, looking down on a scene so foreign to the landscape in
which it was set, was the square, lichen-grown tower of the parish church of
Radbrooke ; looking down with a calm, dignified, and venerable air through
its eye-like window upon this saturnalia of village life.

Luce was transfixed at her point of vantage. She never moved an inch
more forward, but stood there gazing wistfully at the scene, and especially at
the dancers, like one who would have liked to mingle with them, but was too
shy to enter. If anyone on the edge of the fair and in its full blaze of light,
had looked towards the bend in the road which led downward to Radbrooke
Bottom, they would have beheld a lovely young face framed in a garland of
red hair, looking out through the darkness — Luce's Rubens-like face.

" Thy partner inna theer, Luce," said a voice in the shadow behind
her.

Luce turned quickly round, for she was rather startled, and saw beside her
the fine face and large form of Moll Rivers. She, like Luce, was without her
hat, and when she came forward and stood on a level with Luce, so that the

TWO FOOLISH HEARTS 49

light from the fair flashed full upon their faces, the contrast in their appearance
was very striking.

Moll with her superb height and mass of raven black hair might have
passed for the Queen of Night ; she was in her element, her latitude, her clime
— lusty-limbed and strong. Luce, with her smaller stature and red hair could
pass for Aurora, the Queen of the Morning. She had the appearance of being
out of her element, her latitude, her clime ; she was dainty-limbed and younger
in years than Moll.

Both looked at each other curiously and in some confusion. Moll had a
melancholy look and a rather untidy air ; the hooks of her bodice were
undone, showing a portion of her rounded breasts panting beneath. A cloud
of inexpressible weariness sat in her eyes and upon her forehead. She looked
tired of living.

" Thy partner inna theer. Luce," she repeated, inclining her head towards
the dancers.

" My partner, Molly ? " replied Luce, in some surprise.

" Yes, I've bin all round the wake, in an* out the footers, round the dobby
horses, an' by the shooting galleries, an' canna find 'im. Let 's go away."

They turned down the lane into the shadow. Then Luce spoke.

" It seems from what you say, Moll, that you've been lookin* for a partner.
I hanna got no partner, an' hanna been seeking for one."

" Maybe you might soon hev 'ad one. Luce ? " returned Moll with a mean-
ing look.

" May be," said Luce, with some attempt at dignity.

" That is if you hanna left youm behind at Brookington."

It was one of those deadly thrusts often dealt out by uncultured natures.
If it had been daylight the beholder would have seen the colour rush headlong
into Luce's face and spread all down her neck ; as it was moonlight, the effect
of Moll's words was not observed in her face, though her voice shook when she
next spoke.

" My business is my business, Moll, if so be it 's at Radbrooke or Brooking-
ton. I donna think you ought to trouble yourself about it"

" Perhaps not," said Moll. " I've no call to say anything, I hevn't
I must see all an' say nothing. I mun bear all an' do nothin'."

" I donna know what you mean."

" No, nobody knows what I mean. 'Tis as the parson said in his sarment
on Sunday — ^yes. Miss Luce, I did go to church on Sunday, an' you've no call
to look so dubersome, for some folks inna so black as they're painted ; he said

>

so THE SAVOY

in his sarment as none be so blind as them as wunna see, an' that 's it \ uu
know what I mean, you can see what I mean, yet you make believe ye donna
know."

Luce did not reply. She was burning and trembling at the same time.

She sauntered quietly on, with the commanding figure of Moll at her
side like her elongated shadow. Every now and then they walked out of the
darkness into a thin line of moonlight which came through a gap in the trees ;
then it was seen that both their faces were flushed, and that MolFs in particular
had a cloud of anger growing over it.

" You donna speak, Luce ? " she went on. " Perhaps you be ashamed to.
You were such a good little gell once, an' — I wish I may die if I'm tellin' a lie
— I was very fond on thee. But youVe turned out a faggot, Luce ; yes, a very
faggot."

" And pray, what hev I done to thee, Moll, to be called a faggot by thee ? "

Luce was nearly breaking down ; the vehemence of Moll she had not bar-
gained for. Poor girl, she was receiving punishment for her sin all round —
from her own sex. It was first her mother, then Letty Martin, and now Moll.
Why was it, she inwardly inquired, that women are so cruel to women ? She
expected pity and obtained punishment.

A ray of moonlight fell upon her while Moll was in shadow. It glorified
her. It even lit up the glistening tears in the comers of her eyes and made
them shine like diamonds. Moll looked out of the darkness at her with gfreat
admiration.

" Thou art a pretty faggot. Luce, a very pretty faggot ; but thou'rt a
faggot all the same. I canna wonder at men bein' fond on thee. Giv' me
thy hair, Luce, thy bonnie red hair as he be so in love with, an' I'll never call
thee a faggot no more."

She caught hold of Luce's hair, and held it by her own, comparing the

colours.

"Mine's longer and thicker nor yourn, beautiful hair, inna it? But not
showy like yourn. Men like showy things. Then you've got blue eyes, Luce,
an' mine be dull an' dark. You're altogether more pretty to look at nor I am.
Men like pretty things, little toy things like you, an' I'm big an' bold, an dowdy
— no wonder he doesna like me."

She paused a moment, looking steadfastly at Luce.

" But he might hev come to like me, if you had'na turned up here agen
like the bad penny that you are. Yes," she added almost fiercely, and with
uncontrollable bitterness, " you are a faggot, Luce, else you'd hev stopped at

52 THE SAVOY

" Wunce in awhile I was very fond on thee, Luce ; very fond indeed."

Moll was not a bad girl ; she had in her the makings of a grand character.
Education would not have done it ; changed circumstances might. If she had
been able to look upon life from a different standpoint, if her life had been a
little less hard or her feelings less in opposition to the surroundings of her
existence, she might have been held forward as the type of a great-hearted
woman.

But Nature had fettered her. She had bound her down to narrow
circumstances, and for one strong trait in her character, she had given her six
weak ones. Moll was nevertheless a soft-hearted girl — ^hot, hasty, passionate,
and not entirely selfish ; yet she was a very woman, full of her mother's milk,
ready to cry out one minute and storm the next ; ready to sacrifice others to her
selfishness, and in turn to sacrifice herself to the selfishness of others.

" Yes," she went on, looking down from her superb height at Luce with a
pitying and tender glance, " wunce in a while. Luce, I loved thee well. Doesna
remember the day when thou were made the Queen o* May, an* how it come
on to drizzle wi' rain ? An* how thy mother were afeard for thee, *cause thou
wert a bit nesh an' tisiky i' the chest ? Dost mind how I, such a slummock as
I were i' my work-a-day clothes, cotched thee up an* covered thee wi* my
*urden apron to keep the wet off on thee, an* carried thee to the housen i' that
way, wi'out gettin a spot on thee ; an* how, when we went to Letty's, she had
all we gels in an* gived us a drop o* beistin*s all round ? '*

" I mind it. Luce, gel," she said sadly, after a pause. " Thou wert as
innercent as a cade lamb, an* as pretty as one o* they tulips i' thy mother's
gardin. Yea, thou wert as sweet as a little angel then — like one on them round
the christening basin i* the church yon.'*

" Oh ! Molly, donna, donna,** implored Luce.

" Donna what, Luce ? **

** Donna liken me to a angel. I'm not that ; I'm not that'*

" You was then.**

If Luce was stung into anger and bitterness before by the insulting and
bold words of Moll, she suffered martyrdom now.

The picture which her companion had drawn of her — no more than a
thumb-nail sketch of her as she really was when they made her Queen of the
May — brought back with vivid colouring and acute pain the days of her
innocence ; the days of her purity ; and it sufficed to crush her.

It was like looking back on a lost Heaven.

Being blessed or cursed with a sense of the power of goodness and

TWO FOOLISH HEARTS 53

virtue. Luce saw from what sublime heights she had fallen. The sight over-
whelmed her. To the right-thinking mind there is such a gulf between
unsullied innocence and sin-stained beauty ! Luce saw this and shivered.

" If you liked me then, Moll," she said in a manner exquisitely pretty
and touching, " why donna you like me now? I like you just the same."

" I love Clem," replied Moll ; that was the answer to everything.

Luce sighed and so did Moll ; it was an awkward and painful position
for them both. Few positions can be more painful than that in which two
girls, associated with each other since childhood, and being fairly fond of one
another, are brought to the awkward point of loving the same man.

To quick and pregnant minds which know no other impulses than those
given them by bounteous and indiscriminating Nature, there is tragedy in
that position. There are elements in it worse and more deadly even than the
actual blood-spilling on the village green. There are withered and broken
hearts in it ; dispositions warped and made ugly ; good natures destroyed ;
warm blood congealed.

This was the position of Moll and Luce, and the influences of it had made
themselves felt. Moll had grown ugly and ill-gendered excrescences upon a
disposition which, in its natural state, was kind, warm, open, and loving. For
her the position was worse and more trying than for Luce ; and the Rad-
brooke field-girl, though unblessed with the cleverness and polish which
education is supposed to give, had the discernment to see it.

She loved Clem with a consuming passion which threatened to seriously
affect her health, as it had already affected her well-being ; she knew also,
only too well, that he loved another, and thought no more of her than the
lady-smock — typical of her physical elegance — which he crushed beneath his
heel in field, croft, and meadow.

The thought, nay, the absolute knowledge of this, was as gall and worm-
wood to the passionate village girl. Vag^e fancies arose from the knowledge.
She had one fancy that if Luce had not come back, she could in time have
moulded Clem to her will. She encouraged this fancy till it became a faith,
decided, strong, and durable. Luce had come back ; that was the cause of it
all. And there she stood beside her, so sweet, pretty, and winning, that even
a masculine anger became almost gentleness under her influence.

" I love Clem ! "

What could Luce say to that ? She had been weak, vain, foolish, and as
her own sad heart told her, downright wicked. She had been led astray ; she
bore about with her the burden of a knowledge that the fidelity of Clem was

54 THE SAVOY

of such a quality as to be worth a far better girl than she was — ^yet there was
the awkward fact that Clem had no eyes for any girl but her — that he still
loved her as dearly as before her falling away ; and, to crown all, and make
the position more painful than ever, there was the fact that she loved Clem
with a feeling which she could never have for any other man 1

" I am so sorry, Moll," she said, simply and earnestly, looking at her
companion.

" Art thee so. Luce ? Then perhaps thee 'It 'elp, lass, in this ill-con-
venient kaszhulty. I canna abear my life as it be now. I've bin thinkin',
Luce, as belike Clem 'ood look on me wi' more favourable eyes if it weren't
for thee bein' here. Couldst thee not go rimming to thy uncle's at
Rodbridge?"

Luce did not speak, and Moll paused. The silver light of the moon
which now moved from Luce's face and settled upon hers, showed upon it an
intensely wearied and helpless expression. Moll looked like one upon whom
an inexorable fate had passed sentence of death ; her face was a picture of
deeply-rooted, permanent, and melancholy resignation.

" Nay," she said, " I see that wunna do. Two miles apart 'ood be nothin*
for 'im to walk o' nights. He'd come an* see thee theer every day arter the
work were done. I could'na bear that as much as this. Now I can meet 'im
sometimes an' see 'im unbeknown to 'im ; but then I could'na. He'd be
entirely away from Radbrooke, an* I should be moilin' mysen to death at not
seein' a sight on 'im. No, Luce, 'twood never do for thee to go rimming to
thy uncle's at Rodbridge. You mun stay here, such be my unaccountable
fortin'."

"But, Luce," she added more quietly, and with a more dejected air,
" remember that you be differend to me. I hanna got anythink to love, not a
single livin' thing i' the world — not, I mean, i* the way that you love — not the
same sort o' love, like as people feels to one another when they be young like
as we be. I've got my poor old dad, an' Fan, o' course, but they donna bring
the same feeling as what I mean. You've got 'iw, Luce, an' you've got that
little cade lamb o' thine as comes on the farm every day like a flash o' sun-
shine. Remember me then, lass, an' donna let 'im see thee oftener than be
needed, for I shall know it, an' 'twill be 'ard for me to bear, lovin' *im as I do.
Oh I Luce, Luce, give me thy red hair. Give me — Oh ! why dinna God
mek 'im love me instead o' thee ! "

She bent down with the anguish she was enduring, right over the form of
Luce, and clasped her big arms round her smaller companion's neck. It was

TWO FOOLISH HEARTS 55

like a great oak wrapping its shielding limbs round a tender sapling — like
Despair clinging to the smallest Hope.

Luce was herself moved to tears.

** I dinna know you loved him like this, Moll. Poor wench, Til ease it for
thee if I can. Yes, I will, lass, I will," and the little red-haired girl there and
then formed a resolution, which she was determined to keep, if — if — the power
within her lay.

" Luce, Luce ! " cried a voice at that moment from the direction of Mrs.
Cowland's cottage, " come in, lass, the little 'un's waked up, an* I canna coax
'im off agen."

It was the voice of Luce's mother. As the girls separated from their
embrace, Mrs. Cowland in person met them at the foot of the dark stretch of
lane.

" What, Molly ! Be you wi* Luce, then ? Well, 'tis as glorious a night
as I've sin for some time, an' you canna do much harm rimming about. But
the dag's fallin' now, an' you hanna no 'ats on yeryeds. Come in. Luce. You
mun hev bewitched the little waxwork, for I canna manage to raggle on wi'
'im nohow. He wants 'is muther, 'is muther, an' no 'un else 'ull do for he.
You mun surely hev bewitched 'im wi' your winnin' ways, I doubt."

" Her bewitches all on us, Mrs. Cowland, Luce do," said Moll, with a sad
smile.

" Oh, Moll ! " cried Luce, prettily.

George Morlev.

PIEUSEMENT

A nuit d'hiver ilive au del son pur calice.

Et je leve mon ccEur aussi, mon cceur nocturne,
Seigneur, mon cceur ! vers ton pile infini vide,
Et neanmoins, je sais que rien n'en pourra I'ume
Combler, et que rien n'est dont ce cceur meurt avide ;
Et Je te sais mensonge et mes Ifevres te prient
Et mes genoux ; je sais et tes grandes mains closes
Et tes grands yeux fermis aux dfoespoirs qui crient,
Et que c'est moi, qui, seul, me rfive dans les choses ;
Sois de piti^, Seigneur, pour ma toute d^mence,
J'ai besoin de pleurer mon mal vers ton silence ! . . .

La nuit d'hiver i\hve au ciel son pur calice !

Emile Verhaeren.

IN PIOUS MOOD

HE winter lifts its chalice of pure night to heaven.

And I uplift my heart, my night-worn heart, in turn,
O Lord, my heart 1 to thy pale, infinite Inane,
And yet I know that nought the implenishable urn
May plenish, that nought is, whereof this heart dies fain ;
And I know thee a lie, and with my lips make prayer
And with my knees ; 1 know thy great, shut hands averse,
Thy great eyes closed, to all the clamours of despair ;
It is I, who dream myself into the universe ;
Have pity on my wandering wits' entire discord ;
Needs must I weep my woe towards thy silence, Lord !

The winter lifts its chalice of pure night to heaven.

OsMAN Edwards.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

III

O far I have attempted to follow with Utile or no comment
what seems to me the main current of Nietzsche's thought.
It may be admitted that there is some question as to
which is the main current For my own part I have
no hesitation in asserting that it is the current which
expands to its fullest extent between 1876 and 1883 in
what I term Nietzsche's second or middle period ; up to then he had not
gained complete individuality ; afterwards came the period of uncontrolled
aberrations. Thus 1 am inclined to pass lightly over the third period, during
which the conception of " master -morali^ " attained its chief and most rigid
emphasis, although I gather that to Nietzsche's disciples as to his foes this con-
ception seems of primary importance. This idea of " master-morality " is in
fact a solid fossilized chunk, easy to handle for friendly or unfriendly hands.
The earlier and more living work — the work of the man who truly said that it
is with thinkers as with snakes : those that cannot shed their skins die — is
less obviously tangible. So the " master-morality " it is that your true
Nietzschian is most likely to close his fist over. It would be unkind to say
more, for Nietzsche himself has been careful to scatter through his works, on
the subject of disciples and followers generally, very scathing remarks which
must be sufficiently painful to the ordinary Nietzschian.

We are helped in understanding Nietzsche's philosophic significance if we
understand his precise ideal. The psychological analysis of every great
thinker's work seems to reveal some underlying fundamental image or thought
— often enough simple and homely in character — which he has carried with
him into the most abstract regions. Thus Fraser has found good reason
to suppose that Hegel's main ideas were suggested by the then recent
discovery of galvanism. In Nietzsche's case this key is to be found in the
persistent image of an attitude. As a child, his sister tells us, he had been
greatly impressed by a rope-dancer who had performed his feats over the
market-place at Naumburg, and throughout his work, as soon as he had

58 THE SAVOY

attained to real self-expression, we may trace the image of the dancer. " I do
not know," he somewhere says, " what the mind of a philosopher need desire
more than to be a good dancer. For dancing is his ideal, his art also,
indeed his only piety, his * divine worship/ " In all Nietzsche's best work we
are conscious of this ideal of the dancer, strong, supple, vigorous, yet harmonious
and well-balanced. It is the dance of the athlete and the acrobat rather than
the make-believe of the ball-room, and behind the easy equipoise of such
dancing lie patient training and effort. The chief character of good dancing is
its union of the maximum of energetic movement with the maximum of well-
balanced grace. The whole muscular system is alive to restrain any excess, so
that however wild and free the movement may seem it is always measured ;
excess would mean ignominious collapse. When in his later years Nietzsche
began, as he said, to " philosophize with the hammer," and to lay about him
savagely at every hollow " idol " within reach, he departed from his better ideal
of dancing, and his thinking became intemperate, reckless, desperate.

Nietzsche had no system, probably because the idea that dominated his
thought was an image, and not a formula, the usual obsession of philosophers,
such as may be clapped on the universe at any desired point He remarks in
one place that a philosopher believes the worth of his philosophy to lie in the
structure, but that what we ultimately value are the finely carven and separate
stones with which he builded, and he was clearly anxious to supply the
elaborated stones direct. In time he came to call himself a realist, using the
term, in no philosophic sense, to indicate his reverence for the real and essen-
tial facts of life, the things that conduce to fine living. He desired to detach
the " bad conscience " from the things that are merely wicked traditionally, and
to attach it to the things that are anti-natural, anti-instinctive, anti-sensuous.
He sought to inculcate veneration for the deep-lying sources of life, to take us
down to the bed-rock of life, the rock whence we are hewn. He held that man,
as a reality, with all his courage and cunning, is himself worthy of honour, but
that man's ideals are absurd and morbid, the mere dregs in the drained cup of
life ; or, as he eventually said — and it is a saying which will doubtless seal his
fate in the minds of many estimable persons — man's ideals are his only partie
honteuse^ of which we may avoid any close examination. Nietzsche's " realism **
was thus simply a vigorous hatred of all dreaming that tends to depreciate the
value of life, and a vivid sense that man himself is the ens realissimum.

To recognize the free and direct but disconnected nature of Nietzsche's
many-sided vision of the world is to lessen the force of his own antagonisms
as well as of the antagonisms he has excited. The master-morality of his later

J

6o THE SAVOY

outside the moral jurisdiction. In an age in which many moralists desire to
force morals into every part of life and art — and even assume a certain air of
virtue in so doing — the " immoralist " who lawfully vindicates any region for
free cultivation is engaged in a proper and wholesome task.

No doubt, however, there will be some to question the value of such a
task. Nietzsche the immoralist can scarcely be welcome in every camp,
although he remains always a force to be reckoned with. The same may be
said of Nietzsche the freethinker. He was, perhaps, the typical freethinker
of the age that comes after Renan. Nietzsche had nothing of Renan's genial
scepticism and smiling disillusionment ; he was less tender to human weak-
ness, for all his long Christian ancestry less Christian than the Breton
seminarist remained to the last He seems to have shaken himself altogether
free of Christianity — so free, that except in his last period he even speaks of it
without bitterness — and he remained untouched by any mediaeval dreams, any
nostalgia of the cloister such as now and then pursues even those of us who
are farthest from any faith in Christian dogma. Heathen as he was, I do not
think even Heine's visions of the gods in exile could have touched him ; he
never felt the charm of fading and faded things. It is remarkable. It is
scarcely less remarkable that, far as he was from Christianity, he was equally
far from what we usually call " paganism," the pasteboard paganism of easy
self-indulgence and cheerful irresponsibility. It was not so that he under-
stood Hellenism. In a famous essay, Matthew Arnold once remarked that
the ideal Greek world was never sick or sorry. Nietzsche knew better. The
greater part of Greek literature bears witness that the Hellenes were for ever
wrestling with the problems of pain. And none who came after have more
poignantly uttered the pangs of human affairs, or more sweetly the con-
solations of those pangs, than the great disciples of the Greeks who created
the Roman world. The classic world of nymphs and fauns is an invention
of the modems. The real classic world, like the modern world, was a world
of suffering. The difference lies in the method of facing that suffering.
Nietzsche chose the classic method from no desire to sport with Amaryllis
in the shade, but because he had known forms of torture for which the mild
complacencies of modern faith seemed to offer no relief. If we must regard
Nietzsche as a pagan, it is as the Pascal of paganism. The freethinker, it is
true, was more cheerful and hopeful than the believer, but there is the same
tragic sincerity, the same restless self-torment, the same sense of the abyss.

There still remains Nietzsche, the apostle of culture, the philosopher
engaged in the criticism of life. From first to last, wherever you open his

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 6i

books, you light on sayings that cut to the core of the questions that every
modem thinking man must face. I take, almost at random, a few passages
from a single book : of convictions he writes that " a man possesses opinions
as he possesses fish, in so far as he owns a fishing-net ; a man must go fishing
and be lucky, then he has his own fish, his own opinions ; I speak of living
opinions, living fish. Some men are content to possess fossils in their cabinets
— and convictions in their heads." Of the problem of the relation of science to
culture he says well : " The best and wholesomest thing in science, as in
mountains, is the air that blows there. It is because of that air that we
spiritual weaklings avoid and defame science ; " and he points out that the
work of science — with its need for sincerity, infinite patience, complete self-
abnegation — calls for men of nobler make than poetry needs. When we have
learnt to trust science and to learn from it, then it will be possible so to tell
natural history that " everyone who hears it is inspired to health and gladness
as the heir and continuer of humanity." This is how he rebukes those foolish
persons who grow impatient with critics : " Remember that critics are insects
who only sting to live and not to hurt : they want our blood and not our pain."
And he utters this wise saying, himself forgetting it in later years : " Growth
in wisdom may be exactly measured by decrease in bitterness." Nietzsche
desires to prove nothing, and is reckless of consistency. He looks at every
question that comes before him with the same simple, intent, penetrative gaze,
and whether the aspects that he reveals are new or old he seldom fails to
bring us a fresh stimulus. Culture, as he understood it, consists for the
modem man in the task of choosing the simple and indispensable things from
the chaos of crude material which to-day overwhelms us. The man who will
live at the level of the culture of his time is like the juggler who must keep a
number of plates spinning in the air ; his life must be a constant training in
suppleness and skill so that he may be a good athlete. But he is also called
on to exercise his skill in the selection and limitation of his task. Nietzsche
is greatly occupied with the simplification of culture. Our suppleness and
skill must be exercised alone on the things that are vital, essential, primitive ;
the rest may be thrown aside. He is for ever challenging the multifarious
materials for culture, testing them with eye and hand ; we cannot prove them
too severely, he seems to say, nor cast aside too contemptuously the things
that a real man has no need of for fine living. What must I do to be saved ?
what do I need for the best and fullest life ? — that is the everlasting question
that the teacher of life is called upon to answer. And we cannot be too
grateful to Nietzsche for the stern penetration — the more acute for his ever

62 THE SAVOY

present sense of the limits of energy — with which he points us from amid the
mass to the things which most surely belong to our eternal peace.

Nietzsche's style has often been praised. The style was certainly the man.
There can be little doubt, moreover, that there is scarcely any other German
style to compare with it, though such eminence means far less in a country
where style has rarely been cultivated than it would mean in France or even
England. Sallust awoke his sense for style, and may account for some
characteristics of his style. He also enthusiastically admired Horace as the
writer who had produced the maximum of energy with the minimum of
material. A concentrated Roman style, significant and weighty at every
point, are perennius^ was always his ideal. Certainly the philologist's aptitudes
helped here to teach him the value and force of words, as jewels for the gold-
smith to work with, and not as mere worn-out counters to slip through the
fingers. One may call it a muscular style, a style wrought with the skilful
strength of hand and arm. It scarcely appeals to the ear. It lacks the restful
simplicity of the greatest masters, the plangent melody, the seemingly un-
conscious magic quivering along our finest-fibred nerves. Such effects we
seem to hear now and again in Schopenhauer, but rarely or never from any other
German. This style is titanic rather than divine, but the titanic virtues it
certainly possesses in fullest measure : robust and well-tempered vigour, con-
centration, wonderful plastic force in moulding expression. It becomes over-
emphatic at last. When Nietzsche threw aside the dancer's ideal in order to
" philosophize with the hammer," the result on his style was as disastrous as
on his thought ; both alike took on the violent and graceless character of the
same implement. He speaks indeed of the virtue of hitting a nail on the head,
but it is a less skilled form of virtue than good dancing.

Whether he was dancing or hammering, however, Nietzsche certainly
converted the whole of himself into his work, as in his view every philosopher
is bound to do, " for just that art of transformation is philosophy." That he
was entirely successful in being a " real man " one may doubt. His excessive
sensitiveness to the commonplace in life, and his deficiency in the sexual
instinct — however highly he may have rated the importance of sex in life —
largely cut him off from real fellowship with the men who are most " real " to
us. He was less tolerant and less humane than his master Goethe ; his incisive
insight, and, in many respects, better intellectual equipment, are more than
compensated by this lack of breadth. But every man works with the limita-
tions of his qualities, just as we all struggle beneath the weight of the super-
incumbent atmosphere ; our defects are even a part of our qualities, and it

FRIED RICH NIETZSCHE 63

would be foolish to quarrel with them. Nietzsche succeeded in being himself,
and it was a finely rare success. Whether he was a " real man " matters less.
With passionate sincerity he expressed his real self and his best self, abhorring,
on the one hand, what with Verlaine he called " literature," and, on the other,
all mere indigested material, the result of that mental dyspepsia of which he
regarded Carlyle as the supreme warning. A man's real self, as he repeated
so often, consists of the things which he has truly digested and assimilated ;
he must always " conquer " his opinions ; it is only such conquests which he
has the right to report to men as his own. His thoughts are bom of his pain ;
he has imparted to them of his own blood, his own pleasure and torment.
Nietzsche himself held that suffering and even disease are almost indispens-
able to the philosopher; great pain is the final emancipator of the spirit,
those great slow pains that take their time, and bum us up like green wood.
" I doubt whether such pain betters us," he remarks, " but I know that it
deepens us." That is the stuff of Nietzsche's Hellenism, as expressed in the
most light-hearted of his books. Virescit volnere virtus. It is that which
makes him, when all is said, a great critic of life.

It is a consolation to many — I have seen it so stated in a respectable
review — that Nietzsche went mad. No doubt also it was once a consolation
to many that Socrates was poisoned, that Jesus was crucified, that Bruno was
burnt But hemlock and the cross and the stake proved sorry weapons
against the might of ideas even in those days, and there is no reason to suppose
that a doctor's certificate will be more effectual in our own. Of old time we
killed our great men as soon as their visionary claims became inconvenient ;
now, in our mercy, we leave the tragedy of genius to unroll itself to the bitter
close. The devils to whom the modern Faustus is committed have waxed
cunning with the ages. Nietzsche has met, in its most relentless form, the fate
of Pascal and Swift and Rousseau. That fact may carry what weight it will
in any final estimate of his place as a moral teacher : it cannot touch his
position as an immensely significant personality. It must still be affirmed
that the nineteenth century has produced no more revolutionary and
aboriginal force.

Havelock Ellis.

STELLA MALIGNA

A Woman speaks :

ilY little slave !

Wouldst thou escape me ? Only in the grave.

I will be poison to thee, honey-sweet.
And, my poison having tasted,
Thou shall be delicately wasted,

Yet shalt thou live by that delicious death

Thou hast drunken from my breath.

Thou didst with my kisses eat.

I will be thy desire, and thou shalt dee me.

Thy enemy, and thou shalt seek :

My strength is to be weak.

And if through tears, not through thy tears, thou see me.

Beware, for of my kisses if thou tire,

Not of my tears.

Not of my tears shalt thou put off desire

Before the end of years.

What wouldst thou of me, little slave ? my heart ?

Nay, be content, here are mine arms around thee.

Be thou content that I have found thee.

And that I shall not suffer thee depart.

Ask nothing more of me.

Have I not given thee more than thou canst measure?

Take thou thy fill of pleasure.

Exult that thou art mine : think what it is

To be without my kiss ;

Not to have known me is to know not love.

Think, to have known me not I

Heart may indeed from heart remove.

Body by body may not be foi^ot

STELLA MALIGNA 65

Thou hast been mine : ask nothing more of me.
My heart is not for thee.

Child, leave me then my heart ;

I hold it in a folded peace apart,

I hold it for mine own.

There, in the quietness of dreams, it broods

Above untroubled moods,

No man hath been so near me as to have known.

The rest is thine : ah, take

The gift I have to give, my body, lent

For thy unsatisfied content.

For thy insatiable desire's compelling,

And let me for my pleasure make

For my own heart a lonely dwelling.

Thou wilt not ? Thou wilt summon sorrow

From morrow unto endless morrow ?

Thou wilt endure unto the uttermost ?

Ah ! little slave, my slave.

Thou shalt endure until desire be lost

In the achievement of the grave.

Thou shalt endure, and I, in dreams, behold.

Within my paradise of gold.

Thy heart's blood flowering for my peace ;

And thy passion shall release

The secret light that in the lily glows.

The miracle of the secret rose.

Arthur Symons.

THE DYING OF FRANCIS DONNE

A STUDY

^^ Memento homoy quiapulvis es et inpulverem reverteris^^

I

E had lived so long in the meditation of death, visited it so
often in others, studied it with such persistency, with a
sentiment in which horror and fascination mingled ; but it
had always been, as it were, an objective, alien fact, remote
from himself and his own life. So that it was in a sudden
flash, quite too stupefying to admit in the first instance
of terror, that knowledge of his mortality dawned on him. There was
absurdity in the idea too.

" I, Francis Donne, thirty-five and some months old, am going to die," he
said to himself; and fantastically he looked at his image in the glass, and
sought, but quite vainly, to find some change in it which should account
for this incongruity, just as, searching in his analytical habit into the recesses
of his own mind, he could find no such alteration of his inner consciousness as
would explain or justify his plain conviction. And quickly, with reason and
casuistry, he sought to rebut that conviction.

The quickness of his mind — it had never seemed to him so nimble,
so exquisite a mechanism of syllogism and deduction — was contraposed against
his blind instinct of the would-be self-deceiver, in a conflict to which the
latter brought something of desperation, the fierce, agonized desperation of
a hunted animal at bay. But piece by piece the chain of evidence was
strengthened. That subtile and agile mind of his, with its special knowledge,
cut clean through the shrinking protests of instinct, removing them as surely
and as remorselessly, he reflected in the image most natural to him, as the
keen blade of his surgical knives had removed malignant ulcers.

" I, Francis Donne, am going to die," he repeated, and, presently, "/ am
going to die soon; in a few months, in six perhaps, certainly in a year."

THE DYING OF FRANCIS DONNE 67

Once more, curiously, but this time with a sense of neutrah'ty, as he had
often diagnosed a patient, he turned to the mirror. Was it his fancy, or,
perhaps, only for the vague light that he seemed to discover a strange gray
tone about his face ?

But he had always been a man of a very sallow complexion.

There were a great many little lines, like pen-scratches, scarring the
parchment-like skin beneath the keen eyes : doubtless, of late, these had
multiplied, become more noticeable, even when his face was in repose.

But, of late, what with his growing practice, his lectures, his writing ;
all the unceasing labour, which his ambitions entailed, might well have aged
him somewhat. That dull, immutable pain, which had first directed his
attention from his studies, his investigations, his profession, to his corporal
self, the actual Francis Donne, that pain which he would so gladly have
called inexplicable, but could explain so precisely, had ceased for the moment.
Nerves, fancies ! How long it was since he had taken any rest ! He had
often intended to give himself holiday, but something had always intervened.
But he would do so now, yes, almost immediately ; a long, long holiday — he
would grudge nothing — somewhere quite out of the way, somewhere, where
there was fishing ; in Wales, or perhaps in Brittany ; that would surely set
him right.

And even while he promised himself this necessary relaxation in the
immediate future, as he started on his afternoon round, in the background
of his mind there lurked the knowledge of its futility ; rest, relaxation, all
that, at this date, was, as it were, some tardy sacrifice, almost hypocritical,
which he offered to powers who might not be propitiated.

Once in his neat brougham, the dull pain began again ; but by an effort
of will he put it away from him. In the brief interval from house to house —
he had some dozen visits to make — he occupied himself with a medical paper,
glanced at the notes of a lecture he was giving that evening at a certain
Institute on the " Limitations of Medicine."

He was late, very late for dinner, and his man, Bromgrove, greeted him
with a certain reproachfulness, in which he traced, or seemed to trace, a half-
patronizing sense of pity. He reminded himself that on more than one
occasion, of late, Bromgrove's manner had perplexed him. He was glad to
rebuke the man irritably on some pretext, to dismiss him from the room, and
he hurried, without appetite, through the cold or overdone food which was
the reward of his tardiness.

His lecture over, he drove out to South Kensington, to attend a reception

68 THE SAVOY

at the house of a great man — great not only in the scientific world, but also
in the world of letters. There was some of the excitement of success in his
^yts as he made his way, with smiles and bows, in acknowledgment of many
compliments, through the crowded rooms. For Francis Donne's lectures —
those of them which were not entirely for the initiated — ^had grown into the
importance of a social function. They had almost succeeded in making
science fashionable, clothing its dry bones in a garment of so elegantly
literary a pattern. But even in the ranks of the profession it was only the
envious, the unsuccessful, who ventured to say that Donne had sacrificed
doctrine to popularity, that his science was, in their contemptuous parlance,
" mere literature."

Yes, he had been very successful, as the world counts success, and his
consciousness of this fact, and the influence of the lights, the crowd, the
voices, was like absinthe on his tired spirit. He had forgotten, or thought he
had forgotten, the phantom of the last few days, the phantom which was
surely waiting for him at home.

But he was reminded by a certain piece of news which late in the evening
fluttered the now diminished assembly : the quite sudden death of an eminent
surgeon, expected there that night, an acquaintance of his own, and more or
less of each one of the little, intimate group which tarried to discuss it With
sympathy, with a certain awe, they spoke of him, Donne and the others ; and
both the ajve and the sympathy were genuine.

But as he drove home, leaning back in his carriage, in a discouragement,
in a lethargy, which was only partly due to physical reaction, he saw visibly
underneath their regret — theirs and his own — the triumphant assertion of
life, the egoism of instinct They were sorry, but oh, they were glad ! royally
glad, that it was another, and not they themselves whom something mysterious
had of a sudden snatched away from his busy career, his interests, perhaps
from all intelligence ; at least, from all the pleasant sensuousness of life, the
joy of the visible world, into darkness. And he knew the sentiment, and
honestly dared not blame it How many times had not he, Francis Donne
himself experienced it, that egoistic assertion of life in the presence of the
dead — the poor, irremediable dead ? . . . And now, he was only good to give
it to others.

Latterly, he had been in the habit of subduing sleeplessness with injec-
tions of morphia, indeed in infinitesimal quantities. But to-night, although
he was more than usually restless and awake, by a strong effort of reasonable-
ness he resisted his impulse to take out the little syringe. The pain was at

THE DYING OF FRANCIS DONNE 69

him again with the same dull and stupid insistence ; in its monotony, losing
some of the nature of pain and becoming a mere nervous irritation. But he
was aware that it would not continue like that. Daily, almost hourly, it
would gather strength and cruelty ; the moments of respite from it would
become rarer, would cease. From a dull pain it would become an acute
pain, and then a torture, and then an agony, and then a madness. And
in those last days, what peace might be his would be the peace of morphia,
so that it was essential that, for the moment, he should not abuse the
drug.

And as he knew that sleep was far away from him, he propped himself
up with two pillows, and by the light of a strong reading-lamp settled himself
to read. He had selected the work of a distinguished German savant upon
the cardial functions, and a short treatise of his own, which was covered
with recent annotations, in his crabbed hand-writing, upon " Aneurism of the
Heart." He read avidly, and against his own deductions, once more his
instinct raised a vain protest. At last he threw the volumes aside, and lay
with his eyes shut, without, however, extinguishing the light. A terrible
sense of helplessness overwhelmed him ; he was seized with an immense and
heart-breaking pity for poor humanity as personified in himself; and, for the
first time since he had ceased to be a child, he shed puerile tears.

II

The faces of his acquaintance, the faces of the students at his lectures,
the faces of Francis Donne's colleagues at the hospital, were altered ; were, at
least, sensibly altered to his morbid self-consciousness. In every one whom
he encountered, he detected, or fancied that he detected, an attitude of
evasion, a hypocritical air of ignoring a fact that was obvious and unpleasant.
Was it so obvious, then, the hidden horror which he carried incessantly about
with him? Was his. secret, which he would still guard so jealously, become
a byword and an anecdote in his little world ? And a great rage consumed
him against the inexorable and inscrutable forces which had made him to
destroy him ; against himself, because of his proper impotence ; and, above
all, against the living, the millions who would remain when he was no longer,
the living, of whom many would regret him (some of them his personality,
and more, his skill), because he could see under all the unconscious hypocrisy
of their sorrow, the exultant self-satisfaction of their survival.

And with his burning sense of helplessness, of a certain bitter injustice

70 THE SAVOY

in things, a sense of shame mingled ; all the merely physical dishonour of
death shaping itself to his sick and morbid fancy into a violent symbol of what
was, as it were, an actually moral or intellectual dishonour. Was not death,
too, inevitable and natural an operation as it was, essentially a process to
undergo apart and hide jealously, as much as other natural and ignoble
processes of the body ?

And the animal, who steals away to an uttermost place in the forest, who
gives up his breath in a solitude and hides his dying like a shameful thing, —
might he not offer an example that it would be well for the dignity of poor
humanity to follow ?

Since Death is coming to me, said Francis Donne to himself, let me meet
it, a stranger in a strange land, with only strange faces round me and the kind
indifference of strangers, instead of the intolerable pity of friends.

Ill

On the bleak and wave-tormented coast of Finist^re, somewhere between
Quiberon and Fouesnant, he reminded himself of a little fishing-village : a few
scattered houses (one of them being an auberge at which ten years ago he had
spent a night,) collected round a poor little gray church. Thither Francis
Donne went, without leave-takings or explanation, almost secretly, giving but
the vaguest indications of the length or direction of his absence. And there
for many days he dwelt, in the cottage which he had hired, with one old
Breton woman for his sole attendant, in a state of mind which, after all the
years of energy, of ambitious labour, was almost peace.

Bleak and gray it had been, when he had visited it of old, in the late
autumn ; but now the character, the whole colour of the country was changed.
It was brilliant with the promise of summer, and the blue Atlantic, which in
winter churned with its long crested waves so boisterously below the little
white light-house, which warned mariners (alas ! so vainly), against the shark-
like cruelty of the rocks, now danced and glittered in the sunshine, rippled
with feline caresses round the hulls of the fishing-boats whose brown sails
floated so idly in the faint air.

Above the village, on a grassy slope, whose green was almost lurid,
Francis Donne lay, for many silent hours, looking out at the placid sea, which
could yet be so ferocious, at the low violet line of the Island of Groix, which
alone interrupted the monotony of sky and ocean.

He had brought many books with him but he read in them rarely ; and

THE DYING OF FRANCIS DONNE 71

when physical pain gave him a respite for thought, he thought almost of
nothing. His thought was for a long time a lethargy and a blank.

Now and again he spoke with some of the inhabitants. They were a
poor and hardy, but a kindly race : fishers and the wives of fishers, whose
children would grow up and become fishermen and the wives of fishermen in
their turn. Most of them had wrestled with death ; it was always so near to
them that hardly one of them feared it ; they were fatalists, with the grim and
resigned fatalism of the poor, of the poor who live with the treachery of
the sea.

Francis Donne visited the little cemetery, and counted the innumerable
crosses which testified to the havoc which the sea had wrought. Some of the
graves were nameless ; holding the bodies of strange seamen which the waves
had tossed ashore.

"And in a little time I shall lie here," he said to himself; "and here
as well as elsewhere," he added with a shrug, assuming, and, for once, almost
sincerely, the stoicism of his surroundings, " and as lief to-day as to-morrow."

On the whole, the days were placid ; there were even moments when, as
though he had actually drunk in renewed vigour from that salt sea air, the
creative force of the sun, he was tempted to doubt his grievous knowledge, to
make fresh plans of life. But these were fleeting moments, and the reaction
from them was terrible. Each day his hold on life was visibly more slender, and
the people of the village saw, and with a rough sympathy, which did not
offend him, allowed him to perceive that they saw, the rapid growth and the
inevitableness of his end.

IV

But if the days were not without their pleasantness, the nights were
always horrible — a torture of the body and an agony of the spirit. Sleep was
far away, and the brain, which had been lulled till the evening, would awake,
would grow electric with life and take strange and abominable flights into the
darkness of the pit, into the black night of the unknowable and the unknown.

And interminably, during those nights which seemed eternity, Francis
Donne questioned and examined into the nature of that Thing, which stood,
a hooded figure beside his bed, with a menacing hand raised to beckon him
so peremptorily from all that lay within his consciousness.

He had been all his life absorbed in science ; he had dissected, how many
bodies ? and in what anatomy had he ever found a soul ? Yet if his avocations,

72 THE SAVOY

his absorbing interest in physical phenomena had made him somewhat a

materialist, it had been almost without his consciousness. The sensible,

visible world of matter had loomed so large to him, that merely to know

that had seemed to him sufficient All that might conceivably lie outside it,

he had, without negation, been content to regard as outside his province.

And now, in his weakness, in the imminence of approaching dissolution,

his purely physical knowledge seemed but a vain possession, and he turned

with a passionate interest to what had been said and believed from time

immemorial by those who had concentrated their intelligence on that strange

essence, which might after all be the essence of one's personality, which might

be that sublimated consciousness — the Soul — actually surviving the infamy of

the grave ?

Animula, vagula, blandula !
Hospes comesque corporis.
Quae nunc abibis in loca ?
Pallidula, rigida, nudula.

Ah, the question ! It was an harmony, perhaps (as, who had maintained ?
whom the Platonic Socrates in the " Phaedo'" had not too successfully refuted),
an harmony of life, which was dissolved when life was over ? Or, perhaps, as
how many metaphysicians had held both before and after a sudden great
hope, perhaps too generous to be true, had changed and illuminated, to count-
less millions, the inexorable figure of Death — a principle, indeed, immortal,
which came and went, passing through many corporal conditions until it was
ultimately resolved into the great mind, pervading all things? Perhaps ? . . .
But what scanty consolation, in all such theories, to the poor body, racked with
pain and craving peace, to the tortured spirit of self-consciousness so achingly
anxious not to be lost.

And he turned from these speculations to what was, after all, a possibility
like the others ; the faith of the simple, of these fishers with whom he lived,
which was also the faith of his own childhood, which, indeed, he had never
repudiated, whose practices he had simply discarded, as one discards puerile
garments when one comes to man's estate. And he remembered, with the
vividness with which, in moments of great anguish, one remembers things
long ago familiar, forgotten though they may have been for years, the
triumphant declarations of the Church :

" Onines quidem resurgemus^ sed non onines immutabimur. In momento^ in
tctu oculiy in novissima tuba : canet enim tuba : et mortui resurgent incorrupti^ et
nos immutabimur, Oportet enim corruptibile lioc induere immorialitatem. Cum

THE DYING OF FRANCIS DONNE 73

autent fnortale hoc induerit immortalitatem tunc fiet sermo qui scriptus est :
Absorpta est mors in victoria. Ubi est^ mors^ victoria tua ? Ubi est^ ntors^
stimulus tuus ? "

Ah, for the certitude of that! of that victorious confutation of the
apparent destruction of sense and spirit in a common ruin. . . . But it was a
possibility like the rest ; and had it not more need than the rest to be more
than a possibility, if it would be a consolation, in that it promised more ?
And he gave it up, turning his face to the wall, lay very still, imagining
himself already stark and cold, his eyes closed, his jaw closely tied (lest the
ignoble changes which had come to him should be too ignoble), while he
waited until the narrow boards, within which he should lie, had been nailed
together, and the bearers were ready to convey him into the corruption which
was to be his part.

And as the window-pane grew light with morning, he sank into a drugged,
unrestful sleep, from which he would awake some hours later with eyes more
sunken and more haggard cheeks. And that was the pattern of many
nights.

V

One day he seemed to wake from a night longer and more troubled than
usual, a night which had, perhaps, been many nights and days, perhaps even
weeks ; a night of an ever-increasing agony, in which he was only dimly con-
scious at rare intervals of what was happening, or of the figures coming and
going around his bed : the doctor from a neighbouring town, who had stayed
by him unceasingly, easing his paroxysms with the little merciful syringe ; the
soft, practised hands of a sister of charity about his pillow ; even the face of
Bromgrove, for whom doubtless he had sent, when he had foreseen the utter
helplessness which was at hand.

He opened his eyes, and seemed to discern a few blurred figures against
the darkness of the closed shutters through which one broad ray filtered in ;
but he could not distinguish their faces, and he closed his eyes once more.
An immense and ineffable tiredness had come over him, but the pain — oh,
miracle ! had ceased. . . . And it suddenly flashed over him that this — this
was Death ; this was the thing against which he had cried and revolted ; the
horror from which he would have escaped ; this utter luxury of physical
exhaustion, this calm, this release.

The corporal capacity of smiling had passed from him, but he would fain
have smiled.

74 THE SAVOY

And for a few minutes of singfular mental lucidity, all his life ilahsed
before him in a new relief; his childhood, his adolescence, the people whom
he had known ; his mother, who had died when he was a boy, of a malady
from which, perhaps, a few years later, his skill had saved her ; the friend of
his youth who had shot himself for so little reason ; the girl whom he had
loved, but who had not loved him. . . . All that was distorted in life was
adjusted and justified in the light of his sudden knowledge. Btati mortui . . .
and then the great tiredness swept over him once more, and a fainter con-
sciousness, in which he could yet just dimly hear, as in a dream, the sound of
Latin prayers, and feel the application of the oils upon all the issues and
approaches of his wearied sense ; then utter unconsciousness, while pulse and
heart gradually grew fainter until both ceased. And that was all.

Ernest Dowson.

THREE SONNETS

HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW

TRONG shepherd of thy sheep, pasturers of the sea:
Far on the Western marge, thy passionate Cornish land !
Ah, that from out thy Paradise thou couldst thine hand
Reach forth to mine, and I might tell my love to thee 1
For one the faith, and one the joy, of thee and me.
Catholic faith and Celtic joy : I understand

Somewhat, I too, the messengers from Sion strand ;

The voices and the visions of the Mystery.

Ah, not the Chaunt alone was thine : thine too the Quest !
And at the last the Sangraal of the Paschal Christ
Flashed down Its fair red Glory to those dying eyes :
They closed in death, and opened on the Victim's Breckst.
Now, while they look for ever on the Sacrificed,
Remember, how thine ancient race in twilight lies !

MOTHER ANN: FOUNDRESS OF THE SHAKERS

IIHITE were the ardours of thy soul, O wan Ann Lee !

Thou spirit of fine fire, for every storm to shake !
I They shook indeed the quivering flame ; yet could not make
] Its passionate light expire, but only make it flee :
I Over the vast, the murmuring, the embittered sea,
' Driven, it gleamed : no agonies availed to break
That burning heart, so hot for heavenly passion's sake ;
The heart, that beat, and burned, and agonized, in thee !

THE SAVOY

Thou knewest not : yet thine was altar flame astray :

Poor exiled, wandering star, that might'st have stayed and stood

Hard by the Holy Host, close to the Holy Rood,

Illumining the great one Truth, one Life, one Way !

O piteous pilgrim pure amid night's sisterhood :

For thee doth Mother Mary, Star of Morning, pray

MUNSTER: a.d. 1534

E are the golden men, who shall the people save :

For only ours are visions, perfect and divine ;

And we alone are drunken with the last best wine ;

And very Truth our souls hath flooded, wave on wave.

Come, wretched death's inheritors, who dread the grave!

Come ! for upon our brows is set the starry sign
Of prophet, priest, and king : star of the Lion's line !
Leave Abana, leave Pharpar, and in Jordan lave !

It thundered, and we heard : it lightened, and we saw :
Our hands have torn in twain the Tables of the Law :
Sons of the Spirit, we know nothing more of sin.
Come ! from the Tree of Eden take the mystic fruit :
Come ! pluck up God's own knowledge by the abysmal root :
Come ! you, who would the Reign of Paradise begin.

Lionel Johnson.

THE GINGERBREAD FAIR AT
VINCENNES

A COLOUR-STUDY

lIHE tram rolls heavily through the sunshine, on the way to
Vincennes. The sun beats on one's head like the glow of
a furnace ; we are in the second week of May, and the hour
s between one and two in the afternoon. From the Place
Voltaire, all along the dingy boulevard, there are signs of the
fair : first, little stalls, with the refuse of ironmonger and
pastry-cook, then little booths, then a few roundabouts, the wooden horses
standing motionless. At the Place de la Nation we have reached the fair
itself. Already the roundabouts swarm in gorgeous inactivity ; shooting-
galleries with lofty names — Tir Metropolitain, Tir de Lut^ce — lead on to the
establishments of cocftonnerU, the gingerbread pigs, which have given its name
to the Foire em pain d^ct. From between the two pillars, each with its airy
statue, we can look right on, through lanes of stalls and alleys of dusty trees,
to the railway bridge which crosses the other end of the Cours de Vincennes,
just before it subsides into the desolate boulevard Soult and the impoverished
grass of the ramparts. Hardly anyone passes : the fair, which is up late, sleeps
till three. I saunter slowly along, watching the drowsy attitudes of the women
behind their stalls, the men who lounge beside their booths. Only the pho-
tt^rapher is in activitj', and as you pause a moment to note his collection of
grimacing and lachrymose likenesses (probably very like), a framed horror is
thrust into your hand, and a voice insinuates : " Six pour un sou. Monsieur ! "
To stroll through the fair just now is to have a sort of " Private View."
The hour of disguises has not yet b^un. The heavy girl who, in an hour's
time, will pose in rosy tights and cerulean tunic on those trestles yonder in front
of the theatre, sits on the ladder-staircase of her " jivin wardo," her " living

So THE SAVOY

waggon," as the gipsies call it, diligently mending, with the help of scissors
and thread, a piece of canvas which is soon to be a castle or a lake. A lion-
tamer, in his shirt-sleeves is chatting with the proprietress of a collection of
waxworks. A fairy queen is washing last week's tights in a great tub. And
booths and theatres seem to lounge in the same deshabille. With their vacant
platforms, their closed doors, their too visible masterpieces of coloured canvas,
they stand, ugly and dusty, every crack and patch exposed by the pitiless
downpour of the sunlight. Here is the show of Pezon, the old lion-tamer,
who is now assisted by his son ; opposite, his rival and constant neighbour,
Bidel. The Grand Theatre Cocherie announces its " grande fterie " in three
acts and twenty tableaux. A " concert international " succeeds a very dismal-
looking "Temple de la Gaiety." Here is the Theatre Macketti; here the
" Grande Mus^e Vivant " ; here a " Galerie artistique " at one sou. " Laurent,
inimitable dompteur (pour la premiere fois i Paris)," has for companion
" Juliano et ses fauves : Fosse aux Lions." There is a very large picture of a
Soudanese giant — " il est ici, le g^ant Soudanais : 2™ 20 de hauteur " — outside
a very small tent ; the giant, very black in the face, and very red as to his
habiliments, holds a little black infant in the palm of his hand, and by his side,
carefully avoiding (by a delicacy of the painter) a too direct inspection, stands
a gendarme, who extends five fingers in a gesture of astonishment, somewhat
out of keeping with the perfect placidity of his face. " Theatres des Illusions "
flourish side by side with " Musses artistiques," in which the latest explosive
Anarchist, or " le double crime du boulevard du Temple," is the " great attrac-
tion " of the moment. Highly coloured and freely designed pictures of nymphs
and naiads are accompanied by such seductive and ingenuous recommendations
as this, which I copy textually : I cannot reproduce the emphasis of the
lettering : " Etoiles Anim^es. Filles de TAir. Nouvelle attraction par le pro-
fesseur Julius. Pourquoi Mile. Isaure est-elle appel6e Dtesse des Eaux ? C'est
par sa Gr^ce et son pouvoir myst^rieux de paraitre au milieu des Eaux limpides,
devant tous les spectateurs qui deviendront ses Admirateurs. En Plein Th^&tre
la belle Isaure devient Syr^ne et Nayade! charme par ses jeux sveltes et
souples, apparatt en Plein Mer, et pr^sent^e par le professeur Julius k chaque
representation. Plusieurs p^les imitateurs essayent de copier la belle Isaure,
mais le vrai Public, amateur du Vrai et du Beau, dira que la Copie ne vaut
pas Toriginal." And there is a "Jardin myst^rieux" which represents an
improbable harem, with an undesirable accompaniment of performing reptiles.
Before this tent I pause, but not for the sake of its announcements. In the
doorway sits a beautiful young girl of about sixteen, a Jewess, with a face that

THE GINGERBREAD FAIR AT VINCENNES 8i

Leonardo might have painted. A red frock reaches to her knees, her thin l^s,
in white tights, are crossed nonchalantly ; in her black hair there is the sparkle
of false diamonds, ranged in a tiara above the gracious contour of her forehead ;
and she sits there, motionless, looking straight before her with eyes that see
nothing, absorbed in some vague reverie, the Monna Lisa of the Gingerbread
Fair.

II

It is half-past three, and the Cours de Vincennes is a carnival of colours,
sounds, and movements. Looking from the Place de la Nation, one sees
a long thin line of customers along the stalls of bonbons and gingerbread, and
the boulevard has the air of a black-edged sheet of paper, until the eye reaches
the point where the shows begin. Then the crowd is seen in black patches,
sometimes large, extending half across the road, sometimes small ; every now
and then, one of the black patches thins rapidly, as the people mount the plat-
form, or as there is a simultaneous movement from one point of attraction
to another. At one's back the roundabouts are squealing the "repertoire
Paulus," in front there is a continuous, deafening rumble of drums, with an
inextricable jangle and jumble of brass bands, each playing a different tune,
all at once, and all close together. Shrill or hoarse voices are heard for a
moment, to be drowned the next by the intolerable drums and comets. As
one moves slowly down the long avenue, distracted by the cries, the sounds,
coming from both sides at once, it is quite another aspect that is presented by
those dingy platforms, those gaping canvases, of but an hour ago. Every plat-
form is alive with human frippery. A clown in reds and yellows, with a floured
and rouged face, bangs a big drum, an orchestra (sometimes of one, sometimes
of fifteen) " blows through brass " with the full power of its lungs ; fulgently and
scantily attired ladies throng the foreground, a man in plain clothes squanders
the remains of a voice in howling the attractions of the interior, and in the back-
ground, at a little table, an opulent lady sits at the receipt of custom, with the
business-like solemnity of the datne du comptoir of a superior restaurant.
Occasionally there is a pas seul, more often an indifferent waltz, at times an
impromptu comedy. Outside Bidel's establishment a tired and gentle drome-
dary rubs its nose against the pole to which it is tied ; elsewhere a monkey
swings on a trapeze ; a man with a snake about his shoulders addresses the
crowd, and my Monna Lisa, too, has twined a snake around her, and stands
holding the little malevolent head in her fingers, like an exquisite and harmless
Medusa.

82 THE SAVOY

Under the keen sunlight every tint stands out sharply, and to pass
between those two long lines of gesticulating figures is to plunge into an
orgy of clashing colours. All the women wear the coarsest of worsted tights,
meant, for the most part, to be flesh-colour, but it varies, through all the
shades, from the palest of pink to the brightest of red. Often the tights
are patched, sometimes they are not even patched. The tunic may be mauve,
or orange, or purple, or blue ; it is generally open in front, showing a close-
fitting jersey of the same colour as the tights. The arms are bare, the faces, as
a rule, made up with discretion and restraint. There is one woman (she must
once have been very beautiful) who appears in ballet skirts ; there is a man in
blue-grey cloak and hood, warriors in plumes and cuirass ; but for the most
part it is the damsels in flesh-coloured tights and jerseys who parade on the
platforms outside the theatres. When they break into a waltz it is always the
most dissonant of mauves and pinks and purples that choose one another as
partners. As the girls move carelessly and clumsily round in the dance, they
continue the absorbing conversations in which they are mostly engaged.
Rarely does anyone show the slightest interest in the crowd whose ^y^s are all
fixed — so thirstingly ! — upon them. They stand or move as they are told,
mechanically, indifferently, and that is all. Often, but not always, well-formed,
they have occasionally pretty faces as well. There is a brilliant little creature,
one of the crowd of warriors outside the Th^^tre Cocherie, who has quite
an individual type of charm and intelligence. She has a boyish face, little
black curls on her forehead, a proud, sensitive mouth, and black eyes full of
wit and defiance. As Miss Angelina, "artiste gymnasiarque, ^uilibriste et
danseuse," goes through a very ordinary selection of steps (" rocks," " scissors,"
and the like, as they are called in the profession), Julienne's ^y^s devour every
movement : she is learning how to do it, and will practise it herself, without
telling anyone, until she can surprise them some day by taking Miss Angelina's
place.

Ill

But it is at night, towards nine o'clock, that the fair is at its best. The
painted faces, the crude colours, assume their right aspect, become harmonious,
under the artificial light The dancing pinks and reds whirl on the platforms,
flash into the gas-light, disappear for an instant into a solid shadow, against
the light, emei^e vividly. The moving black masses sui^e to and fro before
the booths ; from the side one sees lines of rigid figures, faces that the light
shows in eager profile. Outside the The«Ltre Cocherie there is a shifting light

THE GINGERBREAD FAIR AT VINCENNES 83

which turns a dazzling glitter, moment by moment, across the road; it
plunges like a sword into one of the trees opposite, casts a glow as of white
fire over the transfigured green of leaves and branches, and then falls off,
baffled by the impenetrable leafage. As the light drops suddenly on the crowd,
an instant before only dimly visible, it throws into fierce relief the intent t,y^,
the gaping mouths, the unshaven cheeks, darting into the hollows of broken
teeth, pointing cruelly at every scar and wrinkle. As it swings round in the
return, it dazzles the eyes of one tall girl at the end of the platform, among the
warriors : she turns away her head, or grimaces. In the middle of the platform
there is a violent episode of horse-play : a man in plain clothes belabours two
clowns with a sounding lath, and is in turn belaboured ; then the three rush
together, pell-mell, roll over one another, bump down the steps to the ground,
return, recommence, with the vigour and gusto of schoolboys in a scrimmage.
Further on a white clown tumbles on a stage, girls in pink and black and
white move vagfuely before a dark red curtain, brilliant red breeches sparkle, a
girl en garqon^ standing at one side in a graceful pose which reveals her fine
outlines, shows a motionless silhouette, cut out sharply against the light ; the
bell rings, the drum beats, a large blonde-wigged woman, dressed in Louis
XIV., cries her wares and holds up placards, white linen with irregular black
lettering. Outside a boxing booth a melancholy lean man blows inaudibly
into a horn ; his cheeks puff, his fingers move, but not a sound can be heard
above the thunder of the band of Laurent le Dompteur. Before the ombres
chinoises a lamp hanging to a tree sheds its light on a dark red background,
on the gendarme who moves across the platform, on the pink and green hat
of Madame, and her plump hand supporting her chin, on Monsieur's irre-
proachable silk hat and white whiskers. Near by is a theatre where they are
giving the " Cloches de Corneville," and the platform is thronged with lounging
girls in tights. They turn their backs unconcernedly to the crowd, and the light
falls on pointed shoulder-blades, one distinguishes the higher vertebrae of the
spine. A man dressed in a burlesque female costume kicks a print dress
extravagantly into the air, flutters a ridiculous fan, with mincing airs, with
turns and somersaults. People begin to enter, and the platform clears ; a line
of figures marches along the narrow footway running the length of the building,
to a curtained entrance at the end. The crowd in front melts away, straggles
across the road to another show, straggling back again as the drum begins to
beat and the line of figures marches back to the stage.

In front, at the outskirts of the crowd, two youngsters in blouses have
begun to dance, kicking their legs in the air, to the strains of a mazurka ; and

84 THE SAVOY

now two women circle. A blind man, in the space between two booths, sits
holding a candle in his hand, a pitiful object ; the light falls on his straw hat,
the white placard on his breast, his face is in shadow. As I pause before a
booth where a fat woman in tights flourishes a pair of boxing gloves, I find
myself by the side of my Monna Lisa of the enchanted garden. Her show is
over, and she is watching the others. She wears a simple black dress and a
dark blue apron ; her hair is neatly tied back with a ribbon. She is quite
ready to be amused, and it is not only I, but the little professional lady, who
laughs at the farce which begins on a neighbouring stage, where a patch-work
clown comes out arm in arm with a nightmare of a pelican, the brown legs
very human, the white body and monstrous orange bill very fearsome and
fantastic. A pale Pierrot languishes against a tree : I see him as I turn to go,
and, looking back, I can still distinguish the melancholy figure above the
waltz of the red and pink and purple under the lights, the ceaseless turning
of those human dolls, with their fixed smile, their painted colours.

IV

It is half-past eleven, and the fair is over for the night One by one the
lights are extingfuished ; faint glimmers appear in the little square windows of
dressing-rooms and sleeping-rooms ; silhouettes cross and re-cross the drawn
blinds, with lifted arms and huddled draperies. The gods of tableaux vivantSy
negligently modem in attire, stroll off across the road to find a comrade,
rolling a cigarette between their fingers. Monna Lisa passes rapidly, with her
brother, carrying a marketing basket. And it is a steady movement town-
wards ; the very stragglers prepare to go, stopping, from time to time, to buy
a great gingerbread pig with Jean or Suzanne scrawled in great white letters
across it. Outside one booth, not yet closed, I am arrested by the desolation
of a little frail creature, with a thin, suffering, painted face, his pink legs
crossed, who sits motionless by the side of the great drum, looking down
wearily at the cymbals that he still holds in his hands. In the open spaces
roundabouts turn, turn, a circle of moving lights, encircled by a thin line of
black shadows. The sky darkens, a little wind is rising ; the night, after this
day of heat, will be stormy. And still, to the waltz measure of the round-
abouts, turning, turning frantically, the last lingerers defy the midnight, a
dance of shadows.

Arthur Symons.

THE SONG OF THE WOMEN

A WEALDEN TRIO

isl Voice:
HEN ye've got a child 'at 's whist for want of food,
And a grate as grey 's y'r 'air for want of wood,
And y'r man and you ain't nowise not much good ;

Together :

It's hard work a-Christmassing,

Carolling,

Singin' songs about the " Babe what 's born."

2ttd Voice:
When ye've 'eered the bailifTs 'and upon the latch.
And ye've feeled the rain a-trickling through the thatch
An' y'r man can't git no stones to break ner yit no sheep to watch—

Together :
Oh-
We got to come a-Christmassing.

Carolling,

Singin' of the " Shepherds on that morn."

3n^ Voice, more ckterfully :
'E was a man 's poor as us, very near,
An' 'E 'ad 'is trials and danger,

An' I think 'E '11 think of us when 'E sees us singing 'ere; ]
For 'is mother was poor like us, poor dear,
An' she bore him in a manger.

Together :
Ob-
it 's warm in the heavens but it 's cold upon the earth ;
An' we ain't no food at table nor no fire upon the hearth ;
And it 's bitter hard a-Christmassing ;
Carolling ;

Singin' songs about our Saviour's birth ;
Singin' songs about tlu Babe whafs born ;
Singin' of i/ie sfteplierds on lliai morn.

Ford Madox Hueffer.

DOCTOR AND PATIENT

jlH E doctor sat at the bedside of his old friend, now his patient,
who was dying, inevitably dying. Accustomed as he was to
the presence of death, this passing away of a man to whom
he was bound by the tie of a thousand common associations
added a freshness to its aspect, to its profound mysteries, its
terrors. He was inexpressibly sorry. Still, at this critical
moment, with the pale image of the invalid before him, while breathing the
atmosphere of the sick room, his thoughts were remote from the bedside ; he
was preoccupied by another grief.

The patient had realized his fate, he knew that he was on the point
of dying, that the thing was inevitable, and he was reconciled. He waited on
the threshold of death, calmly, without fear ; he seemed to feel the gradual
absorption of his soul into the unknown, to be conscious of a gradual efface-
ment, and the sensation filled him only with a benign curiosity.

With the quickened sensitiveness of an invalid the sick man understood
that his companion at his bedside was troubled, his good friend who had
nursed him with so eager a devotion ; and at first he thought, and the thought
occasioned him a tranquil, warming sense of gratitude, that it was the con-
templation of the slender link which held him to life that was the cause. But
a little later, with still quicker intuition, he divined that the trouble had
its origin in another source, that he himself was not concerned in it The com-
prehension of this did not embitter his mind nor diminish its tranquillity ;
he was, indeed, this dying man, sorry for the man of life, for the man of robust
health, sorry that he should be in some unknown pain.

"What is the matter with you, Philip? Something has not gone well
with you ; something is bothering you," he said at last

The doctor took his hand and caressed it quietly. " Are you not ill
my friend ? " he said.

" Yes, yes ; but it is not that There is something else. Tell me. You
will not withdraw your confidence from me now ? Come : let me know. You

88 THE SAVOY

have done your best for me ; perhaps — who knows ! — I may be of some use to
you."

" Will it be more effectual ? " the doctor said rather bitterly.

" Nonsense ! You would have saved me, if you could. It was taken out
of your hands. With you it is different Physical ills, believe me, are alone
incurable ; and are not you a miracle of health ? "

Still the doctor hesitated.

" You would do something for me ? " the patient went on.

" I would give my life for yours, you know."

" Then give me your life, your heart, your full confidence. Give yourself
to me now, old friend, as we have always given ourselves to each other,
unreservedly, without restraint, without evasion. For taking us together, you
and I have been, as men go, tolerably frank towards each other, have we not ?
We have not concealed from each other our little introspective perplexities,
our trivial vanities, our scarcely trivial meannesses. Ours has been a very true
comradeship. Let me feel, while all things are slipping away from me, that it
still exists ; that you have not already come to regard me as a thing apart ;
come, let me carry the memory of it away — away with me."

" Very well, then, I shall tell you .... Frank ! Yes, we have
been rarely open with each other ! Yet, there are many things, the joy and
misery of which at once is, that they are unrevealed and unrevealable."

" Am I at last, at this stage, only becoming to know you ? "

The doctor pressed his hand gently. " And it is more difficult than ever
to tell you now," he said. He got up and walked noiselessly about the room.
"You know, at least, that I have not been a loose-living man," he said
hesitatingly, as if he were formulating a justification, " that I have certain ideas,
that my vagaries have never at any time been excessive, and that even they have
ceased these fourteen years or so, since my marriage. Before then, before my
marriage — well, was I not wild, inconsiderate of others, indiscreet ! But one,
after all, has a tender memory for these precious escapades of youth, for
these gay irresponsible love episodes, of sometimes so melancholy an ending
... In one instance, I am not sure that I was entirely to blame. I loved the
creature ardently enough at the time." Something which he observed in the
face of the ill man made him hesitate. " But how can I talk to you of these

matters, of love, when "

" When death is knocking at my door. Pray continue. Even I, who am
too weak to lift my hand, can feel the strength of love, realize its imperishable
power."

DOCTOR AND PATIENT, 89

" Even you who have never loved"

Even I who have loved in vain, thought the patient. " Go on," he said
aloud.

" I loved her youthfully, tempestuously, unthinkingly ; and when the
reaction came it was too late."

" You had married ? "

" No : I am speaking of before Catherine's time, or, at least, before the
time of my marriage with her."

" Ah ! "

" I began to mistrust her."

" You are not speaking of Catherine ? "

" No. I doubted her fidelity, her love for me. It seemed somehow that
I had been entrapped by her into a difficult position. The idea of marriage,
at any rate, was particularly distasteful to me at the time ; and I would not
marry her. She tried very hard before the child was bom ; I was sorry for her,
but immovable. I could not, you see, come quite to believe in her ; her pro-
testations failed to convince me. There may have been some sort of tempera-
mental antagonism at the bottom of it all, which was responsible for the vague,
undefined suspicions which restrained me."

"She allowed' me to contribute to the support of the child — a boy,
although with a wilful independence, or, perhaps, to cause me pain, she
would take nothing from me for herself Well, some time after this incident
I married Catherine, — a discreet, respectable affair which settled me in my
practice. Catherine and I have rubbed along pretty happily, but we have
had no children. Was there a sort of judgment in that, I wonder? Perhaps.
I have at times half thought so."

" However that may be, I came in time to be instinctively drawn towards
her child — and mine. She consented to my seeing him, a fine brave little
fellow, with my own eyes looking at me from his head. To see him, this part
of me, to be with him, was the greatest happiness I had known : to watch his
gradual development, to listen to his ingenuous prattle, to be vanquished by
him in a bout of repartee, to take him, all unsuspected, to the Zoo or to
a pantomime. You can't realize it ! how the impulses and objects of his little
life became entwined in mine, inseparably, always ! Little ! He has grown ;
his ideas already bear the impress of manhood. I have had him as decently
educated as possible ; she would not let him be out of her sight for long. And
I hoped eventually to be able to send him to Oxford and give him the chance
of a career."

90 THE SAVOY

" You hoped ? . . . Has he died then, too ? "

" He is alive and well, I trast ! only she has never foi^ven me. Perhaps
I was mistaken, unreasonable ; perhaps I should have married her. It might
have been happier. If one could only foresee ! "

" Who was she ? Do I know ? "

" Possibly. I think so, if you can now remember."

" Who ? "

" Beatrice "—

" West ! "

" Ah ! You remember ! "

" I remember," said the patient with closed ^yts.

" You are in pain ? "

" No, no ; go on."

" She has never forgiven me ! " The doctor's voice ringing out in all its
natural vigour sounded strangely unnatural in the silence of the sick room.
" She has, after all these years, taken her revenge, a triumph of ingenious
cruelty. ... I had not seen him — them — for a few weeks, and yesterday,
I received a letter from her inclosing a photogp*aph of the boy, refusing any
further assistance from me on his account, as he can now earn a little for him-
self, and forbidding my ever seeing him again. Of course — ^you will under-
stand — I went immediately, but they had gone ! . . . What will become of him
—of me ! "

" Does Catherine know ? "

" Yes — now. She came across her letter and the boy's photograph. In
my anxiety I had been careless. She bore it very well. I don't think it will
make much difference. Women — all but Beatrice — are indulgent; they
understand and forgive. But I shall feel a difference."

The doctor was silent.

By-and-by he heard the voice of his patient, which had become suddenly
feeble, sunk to the faintest whisper, so inaudible that he had to put his ear close
to the struggling lips to catch what was said :

"Yes, I — knew Beatrice West — I loved her — I would — ^have married
her—"

The doctor shot a quick, startled look of inquiry into his friend's eyes in
which there beamed a brilliant light, a light, which, as he looked, became
fainter and fainter, flickered a little, and then went out for ever.

Rudolf Dircks.

A LITERARY CAUSERIE:

ON A BOOK OF VERSES

BOOK of delicate, mournful, almost colourless, but very
fragrant verses was lately published by a young poet whom
I have the privilege to know somewhat intimately. Whether
a book so essentially poetic, and at the same time so fragile
in its hold on outward things, is likely to appeal very much
to the general public, for which verse is still supposed to be
written, it scarcely interests me to conjecture. It is a matter of more l^itimate
speculation, what sort of person would be called up before the mind's eye of
any casual reader, as the author of love-poetry so reverent and so disembodied.
A very ghostly lover, I suppose, wandering in a land of perpetual twilight,
holding a whispered " coUoque sentimental " with the ghost of an old love :

" Dans le vieux pare solitaire et glac^
Deux spectres ont ^voqu^ le pass^."

That is not how I have seen my friend, for the most part ; and the con-
trast between the man as I have seen him and the writer of verses as I read
them, is to me the most attractive interest of a book which I find singularly
attractive. He will not mind, I know, if I speak of him with some of that
frankness which we reserve usually for the dead, or with which we sometimes
honour our enemies ; for he is of a complete indifference to these things, as I
shall assure myself over again before these lines are printed.

I do not remember the occasion of our first meeting, but I remember
seeing him casually, at railway-stations, in a semi-literary tavern which once
had a fantastic kind of existence, and sometimes, at night, in various parts of
the Temple, before I was more than slightly his acquaintance. I was struck
then by a look and manner of pathetic charm, a sort of Keats-like face, the
face of a demoralized Keats, and by something curious in the contrast of a
manner exquisitely refined, with an appearance generally somewhat dilapi-
dated. That impression was only accentuated, later on, when I came to know

F

92 THE SAVOY

him, and the manner of his life, much more intimately. I think I may date
my first real impression of what one calls " the real man " — as if it were more
real than the poet of the disembodied verses ! — from an evening in which he
first introduced me to those charming supper-houses, open all night through,
the cabmen's shelters. There were four of us, two in evening dress, and we
were welcomed, cordially and without comment, at a little place near the
Langham ; and, I recollect, very hospitably entertained. He was known there,
and I used to think he was always at his best in a cabmen's shelter.
Without a certain sordidness in his surroundings, he was never quite com-
fortable, never quite himself; and at those places you are obliged to drink
nothing stronger than coflfee or tea. I liked to see him occasionally, for a
change, drinking nothing stronger than coflfee or tea. At Oxford, I believe, his
favourite form of intoxication had been haschisch ; afterwards he gave up this
somewhat elaborate experiment in visionary sensations for readier means of
oblivion ; but he returned to it, I remember, for at least one afternoon, in a
company of which I had been the gatherer, and of which I was the host. The
experience was not a very successful one ; it ended in what should have been
its first symptom, immoderate laughter. It was disappointing, and my charming,
expectant friends, disappointed.

Always, perhaps a little consciously, but at least always sincerely, in
search of new sensations, my friend found what was for him the supreme
sensation in a very passionate and tender adoration of the most escaping
of all ideals, the ideal of youth. Cherished, as I imagine, first only in the
abstract, this search after the immature, the ripening graces which time can
but spoil in the ripening, found itself at the journey's end, as some of his
friends thought, a little prematurely. I was never of their opinion. I only
saw twice, and for a few moments only, the young girl to whom most of his
verses were to be written, and whose presence in his life may be held to
account for much of that astonishing contrast between the broad outlines of
his life and work. The situation seemed to me of the most exquisite and
appropriate impossibility. She had the gift of evoking, and, in its way, of
retaining, all that was most delicate, sensitive, shy, typically poetic, in a
nature which I can only compare to a weedy garden, its grass trodden down
by many feet, but with one small, carefully-tended flower-bed, luminous with
lilies. I used to think, sometimes, of Verlaine and his " girl-wife," the one
really profound passion, certainly, of that passionate career ; the charming,
child-like creature, to whom he looked back, at the end of his life, with an
unchanged tenderness and disappointment : " Vous n'avez rien compris k ma

A LITERARY CAUSERIE 93

simplicity," as he lamented. In the case of my friend there was, however, a
sort of virginal devotion, as to a Madonna ; and I think had things gone
happily, to a conventionally happy ending, he would have felt (dare I say ?)
that his ideal had been spoilt

But, for the good fortune of poets, things never do go happily with them,
or to conventionally happy endings. So the wilder wanderings began, and a
gradual slipping into deeper and steadier waters of oblivion. That curious
love of the sordid, so common an affectation of the modem decadent, and
with him so expressively genuine, grew upon him, and dragged him into yet
more sorry comers of a life which was never exactly " gay " to him. And
now, indifferent to most things, in the shipwrecked quietude of a sort of self-
exile, he is living, I believe, somewhere on a remote foreign sea-coast. People
will complain, probably, in his verses, of what will seem to them the factitious
melancholy, the factitious idealism, and (peeping through at a few rare
moments) the factitious suggestions of riot They will see only a literary
affectation where in tmth there is as poignant a note of personal sincerity
as in the more explicit and arranged confessions of less admirable poets.
Yes, in these few, evasive, immaterial snatches of song, I find, implied for the
most part, hidden away like a secret, all the fever and turmoil and the
unattained dreams of a life which has itself had much of the swift, disastrous,
and suicidal energy of genius.

Arthur Symons.

NOTE

A Committee has been formed, in Paris, under the presidency of M. St^phane
Mallarm6, and the vice-presidency of M. Auguste Rodin, for the erection
of a monument to Paul Verlaine. The members of the Committee are :
MM. Edmond Lepelletier, Catulle Mend^s, Henry Bauer, Raoul Ponchon,
Georges Rodenbach, Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, Maurice Harris,
Ernest Delahaye, Alfred Valette, editor of the " Mercure de France," L6on
Deschamps, editor of" La Plume." Alexandre Natanson, editor of the " Revue
Blanche." The treasurer is M. Fernand Clerget ; the secretary, M. F. A. Cazals.
I have been asked by M. Mallarmi to act as English representative of this
Committee, and to receive subscriptions, which may be sent to me at the office
of " The Savoy," Effingham House, Arundel Street, Strand, London, W.C.

Arthur Symons.

THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS 95

THE SAVOY.

EDITED BY ARTHUR SYMONS.

No. I. JANUARY, 1896. 170 pages, 18 full-page Illustrations, and

5 Illustrations in the Text.

No. I contains literary contributions by G. Bernard Shaw, Frederick Wedmore, Paul Verlaine, Max
«rbohm, Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley, Havelock Ellis, W. B. Yeats, Rudolf Dircks, Mathilde
ind, Joseph Pennell, Humphrey James, Selwyn Image, and the Editor. The illustrations include work
Charles H. Shannon, Charles Conder, Joseph Pennell, Louis Oury, W. Rothenstein, F. Sandys, J.
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eardsley.

Crown 4to, bound in pictorial cover, 2s, 6d. net.

No. 2. APRIL, 1896. 202 pages, and 20 full-page Illustrations.

No. 2 includes a story entitled " A Mere Man " (by a new writer) and literary contributions by Cesare
^mbroso ("A Mad Saint"), Paul Verlaine ("My Visit to London"), Edmund Gosse, W. B. Yeats,
lavelock Ellis (" Friedrich Nietzsche "), Frederick Wedmore, Selwyn Image, Ernest Dowson, John Gray,
^incent O'Sullivan, Leila Macdonald, Aubrey Beardsley, and the Editor. The illustrations include work
y Foseph Pennell, C. H. Shannon, W. T. Horton, W. Rothenstein, Ph. Caresme, Albert Sterner, W.
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Crown 4to, bound in new pictorial cover, 2s, 6d. net.

No. 3. JULY, 1896. 103 pages, and 9 full-page Illustrations.

No. 3 contains a story, " Anthony Garstin's Courtship," by Hubert Crackanthorpe, the first of three
tides on "William Blake and his Illustrations to the Divine Comedy," by W. B. Yeats, with important
^published drawings by Blake, the second of three articles on Friedrich Nietzsche by Havelock Ellis,
'^ literary contributions by George Moore, Edward Carpenter, Ernest Dowson, R. Mathieu-Wierz-
t^ski, Edgar Prestage, Aubrey Beardsley, and the Editor. The illustrations include work by William
lake, C. H. Shannon, Max Beerbohm, and Aubrey Beardsley.

Crown 4to, bound in new pictorial wrapper, 2s,

EXTRACTS PROM PRESS NOTICES ON No. 3 OP *'THE SAVOY.

"English people are always supposed to be averse to showing their patriotism by purchasing home-made articles
the foreigner can please them better, and it is unfortunately difficult to see why anyone should buv an illustrated
agazine produced in England so long as he can get ' Harper's/ ' The Century/ or ' Scribner's.' To be^n with, the
tists who draw for these magazines have some pretensions to a knowledge of their craft ; they draw as if they cared
>out drawing. Then again, the Americans are masters of the short story — the present able, well-executed, cultivated
lort story — not the ghosts of the * Pall Mall Magazine,* the detectives of the ' Strand,' or the steam-engines of the
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apoleon, or German liberty, or whatever the American set dish happens to be, and it is permissible sometimes to
bel against the continual roughing it in the West or North ; but it only needs a little courage, and probably these
ings also will be found to be well done. But there is now an English monthly that can ask for support with a good
ace, because it offers better black-and-white work than any periodical, English, American, or French, that we nave
en. We do not know that ' The Savoy ' can claim any extraordinary merit except on the score of Mr. Beardsley's
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ere may have been as to his supreme position as a draughtsman." — Saturday Review.

" Appearing now for the first time as a monthly magazine, ' The Savoy ' retains some of its individual characteristics,
ough perhaps in a mitigated form. Mr. Aubrey Beardsley furnishes a quaintly decorative design for the cover, as
ell as an illustration that is not without grace, of his own verses, ' The Ballad of the Barber.' Other illustrations are
ter the work of that extraordinary artist, William Blake, whose writings and drawings are dealt with in the first of a
ries of three articles to be contributed by Mr. W. B. Yeats." — Morning Post,

96 THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS

Nocturnes and Pastorals. Poems by A. Bernard

Mi ALL.

Four Hundred copies on Large Post 8vo deckle-edged paper, bound in dark green cloth, at Five
Shillings net per copy. Printed at the Chiswick Press.

'* The clearness and daintiness of many of his verse pictures remind one of the silver-point in a kindred art. • . .
One of the prettiest and sincerest books of verse that have come from the press for some time." — Glasgow Herald,

" A series of impressive sonnets. . . . brings to a conclusion a volume that shows throughout a studiously
cultivated gift." — Scotsman,

"A book which vibrates from cover to cover with poetry which has been genuinely felt and spontaneously
uttered."— Mr. Richard Le Gallibnne, in TTie Star,

LfOndon Nights. Poems by Arthur Symons.

Five Hundred Small Paper copies on Large Post 8vo deckle-edged paper, bound in dark green cloth,
at Six Shillings net per copy ; and 50 Large Paper copies on Royal ovo hand-made paper, bound in dark
green buckram, at One Guinea net per copy. Printed at the Chiswick Press. [Small Paper eaUtiaH
entirely out 0/ print : only a few copies of the Large Paper edition remain^

Silhouettes. By Arthur Symons.

Second edition. Carefully revised and enlarged by the addition of Nineteen New Poems. Uniform
in style with " London Nights." 400 Small Paper copies at Five Shillings net per copy ; and 1 5 Large
Paper copies at One Guinea net per copy. Printed at the Chiswick Press. [Small Paper edition entirely
out 0/ print: only a few copies of the Large Paper edition remain^

" To many Mr. Symons may appear a mystic and a dreamer, to us he is a modem minstrel, a troubadour of the
times, with a subtly sweet note of song, which has a cadence and a lilt that linger in the memory like the flash of a
fountain in the Temple on the one hand, or the distant murmur of a mountain stream on the other." — The Newsagent,

The Rape of the Lock. By Alexander Pope.
Illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley.

Edition de Luxe of the above famous Poem, printed at the Chiswick Press, in Crown 4to size, on old
style paper, illustrated with nine elaborate drawings by Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, and bound in a specially
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Orchids. Poems by Theodore Wratislaw.

Two Hundred and Fifty Small Paper copies on Foolscap 8vo deckle-edged paper, bound in cream-
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One Hundred copies on Foolscap 8vo hand-made paper, bound in parchment, at Five Shillings net
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THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS 97

Verses. By Ernest Dowson.

Three Hundred Small Paper copies on hand-made paper, Imperial i6mo, bound in Japanese Vellum,
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"Mr. Dowson has a genuine talent. Indeed he has several talents. A classic propriety of epithet, rising at
moments to remarkable distinction ; a iiill, rich melody, and .... an occasional dignity and thought of feeling?* —
7TU Daily Courier.

THE ONLY RELIABLE WORK ON THE SUBJECT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

The Life and Times of Madame Du Barry.

By Robert B. Douglas.

A limited edition in one volume, with a portrait of Madame Du Barry finely eng^raved upon wood,
594 pages. Demy 8vo, bound in blue cloth with armorial cover design by Aubrey Beardsley, at Sixteen
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" Mr. Douglas has produced a volume every line of which I read with keen interest. It is a singularly vivid and
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" At a time when the book>market is flooded with translations of forgotten and apocryphal French Memoirs, it is
something to meet with a newly-published biography of a French celebrity which is what it pretends to be ... . and
is a book of fascinating interest.— /><zi^ News,

The Fool and his Heart; being the plainly told

Story of Basil Thimm. A Novel by F. Norreys Connell, Author of
" In the Green Park," " The House of the Strange Woman," etc.

In one volume, Crown 8vo, bound in art linen, price Six Shillings.

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" Mr. Connell has already shown a singular liking for the seamy side of life, and unusual power in dealing with
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the same grim humour, and the same grasp of a few not very pleasing types of human nature. ... A feature of the
story is the use that Mr. Connell makes of Catholicism. . . . Full of incident and graphic touches. It should add to
Mr. Connell's reputation." — Scotsman,

IN THE PJ^ESS: READY IN OCTOBER NEXT,

AMORIS VICTIMA, A Poem by Arthur Symons. 400 Small Paper copies and 25 Large
Paper copies. Uniform in style and price with " London Nights."

THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE. A Dramatic Phantasy by Ernest Dowson.

LA FILLE AUX YEUX D'OR. Translated from the French of Honor^ de Balzac by Ernest
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CARICATURES OF TWENTY-FIVE GENTLEMEN. By Max Beerbohm. Finely
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THE SOUVENIRS OF LEONARD, COIFFEUR TO QUEEN MARIE
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Circulars of any of the above Books will be sent on application to
LEONARD SMITHERS, Effingham House, Arundel Street, Strand, London, W.C.

98 THE SAVOY— ADVERTISEMENTS

From MESSRS. HENRY'S LIST.

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

VOL. VIII. :— Thus Spake Zarathustra: a Book for All and None. Translated by Alexander Tiixe, Ph.D.

Medium Svo, in a dark blue buckram binding, designed by Gleeson White, ijs, net

Vol. XI. :— The Case of Wagner; Nietzsche contra W^agner ; The Twilight of the Idols ; The Antichrist.

Translated by Thomas Common.
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life as near to death as any life outside the grave can be, must needs be a tragic figure. It is a figure full of signifi-
cance, for it represents, perhaps, the greatest spiritual force which has appeared since Goethe, full of interest a£o to
the psychologist, and surely not without its pathos, perhaps its horror, for the man in the street." — Mr. Havelocx
Ellis in TA^ Savoy,

'* Nietzsche is worse than shocking, he is simply awful : his epigrams are written with phosphoras or brimstone.
The only excuse for reading him is that before long you must be prepared either to talk about Nietzsche or else retire
from society, especially from aristocratically mind^ society. . . . His sallies, petulant and impossible as some of thcB
are, are the work of a rare spirit and pregnant with its vitality." — Mr. George Bernard Shaw in ihe Saturday Bevint,

** Lurking behind the intellectual movements of Europe in philosophy as in everything else, England is just now
b^inning to hear of the existence of Friedrich Nietzsche." — Mr. Ernest Newman in the Free Review,

** Daring, clever, and oracular." — Glasgow Herald.

** Nietsche is simply a disseminator of poison." — Rock,

•* Nietzsche belongs to the emancipated." — Literary Guide,

** He is no vulgarian like Nordau. - Manchester Guardian,

AN IMPORTANT POLITICAL WORK.

FEDERATION AND EMPIRE : A STUDY IN POLITICS.

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A MAGNIFICENT ART WORK.

SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK : HIS LIFE AND WORK.

Translated from the French of Jules J. Guiffrey by William Alison.
With Seventeen Etchings, by the greatest French etchers of the day, of Pictures never etched before, Twelve

Heliogravures, and One Hundred Illustrations in the Text.

In One Volume, Folio, bound in pale-grey buckram, adorned with the painter's arms in gold, £4. 4s, net.

Of this edition only 265 copies have been printed, of which 250 are numbered for sale. Also 10 copies

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TO-MORROW.

A Monthly Magazine. Edited by J. T. Grein. Price Sixpence. Annual Subscription, ys, post free.

CONTENTS OF THE JULY NUMBER :

The Empire of To-morrow —

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2. By Major-General T. Bland Strange.
The Armenian Question, by E. A. Brayley Hodgetts.
Home Rule or Federation, by T. A. Spalding, LL.B.

The Shops (Early Closing) Bill, by A. Cameron Coibett,

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At all Bookstalls and Booksellers.

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